Alexandra Todoran

Switch to Pipedrive

Q1 2026 seasonal brand campaign: One decision, one line: stop chasing tasks, start closing deals.

Role: Concept, storyboards, stock footage curation, overlay graphics and product screen design

Team: Core team of five, with project management, product marketing and media partners

Timeline: December 2025 to Q1 2026

Deliverables: 30 and 15 second videos (16:9, 9:16) and middle and bottom-funnel stills for UK, US, Australian and German audiences

Overview

Pipedrive was growing toward a bigger audience while its brand story took shape. We built a seasonal Q1 campaign for people who already had a CRM that wasn't a good fit: the idea wasn't to introduce a CRM, but to give them a reason to switch. It lands on one line: "Stop chasing tasks. Start closing deals. Switch to Pipedrive."

Challenge

The brief: hook with a recognizable sales pain, resolve it with a clean product moment that lands the value proposition, and drive action with a confident call to action. Bold, simple, built to work without sound, and moving from pain to proof lower in the funnel.

Audience: sales leaders and revenue and marketing ops at companies of 100 to 250 employees in the US, UK, Germany and Australia. Goal: quality sign-ups.

Approach

We workshopped ideas, narrowed them to three concepts and chose "The instant crash": keeping first-day energy before the old clutter returns. The final story: a sticky note becomes the switch, and Pipedrive takes over the screen.

Script, art direction and storyboards followed, with the concept and the design decisions behind it going through five rounds of stakeholder feedback, then three cuts: 30 seconds and two 15 second versions for A/B testing, each highlighting a different feature, all opening with "Our best sales decision?" and closing on the same line. Stills came first, then video in English, then German and Brazilian Portuguese with their own scripts and voice-overs.

How it answered the brief: pain as the hook, a product-led fix landing the value proposition of clarity over complexity and more time to sell, and one decisive close. Supers and product moments work without sound, the seasonal angle became a clean-start feeling that could run into April, and AI stayed in a supporting role.

Outcome

English masters plus German and Brazilian Portuguese versions, with voice-overs recorded with real artists for UK, US and Australian English, German and Portuguese.

• Live across four markets in three languages on LinkedIn and Meta.
• On LinkedIn, the campaign creatives were the main driver of sign-ups.
• First results shaped the next round of A/B testing.

Not a rebrand. A refinement.

Brand evolution: Back to the roots, with a sharper system, built for a more grown-up audience.

Role: Creative design: research, exploration and direction for typography, color, imagery and product snippets

Team: Core team of three, with project management, messaging and stakeholder partners

Timeline: July 2026 to September 2026

Deliverables: Brand book 2026 in Figma

Overview

Pipedrive is repositioning from an easy CRM for small business to an easy, intelligent CRM loved by growing sales teams. The target audience is expanding to companies with dedicated sales leadership and a real sales tech stack. The brand needed to feel as confident and intelligent as the product, without turning into something unrecognizable. So: not a rebrand, a refinement.

Challenge

The old identity was built for early adopters: approachable, clean, friendly. The new visual system had to signal confidence, intelligence and scale, stay clear, human and recognizably Pipedrive, and cater to the expanding audience.

Approach

Moving upmarket changes what a brand has to prove: less charm, more credibility. We started with a brand mapping of the previous positioning, and the new value proposition was translated into creative principles. A visual audit then mapped all our visual output across platforms, from brand campaigns to upsell, product adoption and events. After a couple of review sessions with stakeholders, we landed on a narrowed-down, more mature corporate visual identity (CVI).

The rule was simple: keep what's ownable and recognizable, and question the rest. Pipedrive green stays the foundation. We removed decoration and narrowed down the experimental, so the system reads as confident and intentional.

Three shifts carry most of the weight.

Type: bold, editorial typography does the work that decoration used to do.

Imagery: from character-led illustration and flat, comic-book compositions to a mix of photography, graphics and real product views, in layered, more immersive environments. Real people and the real product are what a larger buyer recognizes.

Product: simplified product snippets became one ready-to-use system in four levels of detail, from tiny details to full views, so the product looks consistent wherever customers meet it.

Photography is art directed to feel part of the brand: natural, positive, warm, showing mid-size team dynamics and individuals or small groups deeply engaging with the product.

• One brand book covering typography, color, imagery, product snippets and examples
• A matching content style guide, with prompts for Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini that cover visuals as well as writing
• New brand photography library, new product snippets library and a variety of templates for each platform

A lighter, product-first homepage

Homepage redesign: Rebuilding the highest-traffic page around the product.

Role: Concept and art direction, web visuals, design direction exploration, concept testing interviews

Team: Working group across concept, web design, motion, writing and research, with product marketing and brand stakeholders

Timeline: August 2026, ongoing

Deliverables: Homepage design directions in Figma (three concepts)

Overview

The homepage is the front door to pipedrive.com. The brief: a bold, structural redesign, product first, with a clear flow and one AI story.

Challenge

The page read as heavy and busy next to modern SaaS sites, and a lot had to fit on one page: a hero that leads with the product, credibility near the top, a clear value proposition, and visible answers to five real buyer pain points, from scattered customer data to too much manual work. It also had to land the new brand look, clear a higher craft bar, and stay inside agreed page-weight and speed limits. And the aim was a bolder step than the usual small iterations. The brief was to stay on brand, but the project was also meant to take the brand one step further, and its results could show how far it can go.

Approach

We started with research. We looked across competitors on Mobbin, and searched for inspirational layouts and visual directions that matched our key words: modern, intelligent, clean, easy to use and adopt, and quality.

Before drawing anything, we set the structure: one screen per feature, minimizing the amount of tabs or sliders, a single animated product hero, credibility close to the top, and fewer competing calls to action. Then we built an artistic moodboard for each concept, which led to building the page in three directions: clean, crisp and light; natural, warm and approachable; and strong, colorful, energetic and expressive. Each one was built around a single keyword (A clean, B human, C dynamic), so the test could show which quality people actually wanted.

To choose with evidence, we ran 11 moderated interviews with non-customers: seven founders and four sales leaders. Because we tested, we also had a good opportunity to collect data on the brand evolution itself, not just on the layouts: how far the refreshed brand could go on the page. Each person saw the three new directions and the current page, with the same headline throughout, rated each one on 12 qualities such as clean, clear, premium and trustworthy, and picked the best fit for eight prompts. The part I'm proudest of: the keywords showed up in the results. People rated A the cleanest of the four, and B the most approachable and human. C was the one people called dynamic.

Outcome

Phase 1 gave a clear direction. The cleanest, lightest direction (A) scored above the current page on 11 of 12 qualities and became the base layout for Phase 2. The warmer direction with real customer faces (B) came a close second and led on warmth and trust. We then built three new, evolved versions that use the backbone of A with the best additions from B, planned for a quantitative test.