Costa Rica Incentive Trip Identity

Paid social campaign for Heartland — bringing calm to the chaos of home‑service invoicing

Client: Heartland Payment Systems
Industry: Financial Technology
Role: Concept, Visual Direction, Design, AI Prompt Engineering

Overview

Heartland, a payments and invoicing provider, set out to reach home‑service businesses (HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and other trades) with a simple promise: getting paid shouldn’t slow you down.

I led the creative direction for a paid social campaign that turned everyday chaos into sharp, human visuals — and showcased the calm Heartland brings to it.

Objectives

  • Capture attention in a crowded home‑services feed

  • Drive qualified traffic to the campaign site

  • Increase engagement and click‑through

  • Build a visual system that could scale across the full campaign ecosystem

The Challenge

Home‑service teams work fast — their invoicing tools don’t always keep up. Slow payments, manual errors, and scattered workflows pull owners away from actual work. Meanwhile, competitors blended together visually, relying on predictable stock photography and generic messaging.

Heartland had the right solutions. The creative challenge was to communicate their value instantly and memorably.

Insight

Service‑industry professionals spend their days lifting, repairing, hauling, building — not relaxing. Their downtime is rare and earned. If we flipped that reality into something slightly surreal, we could show Heartland’s true benefit at a glance: Heartland gives them their time back.

Idea

The creative centered on lifelike, role‑reversal moments — hardworking tradespeople placed in calm, indulgent environments they rarely get to enjoy.

  • A construction worker unwinding in a spa

  • A gardener drifting across a pool on a bright float

  • A burly contractor in a yoga class

  • A technician sipping a piña colada on the beach

These scenarios acted as visual metaphors: When Heartland handles invoicing and payments, their customers reclaim their downtime.

To achieve the realism the concept required, I engineered detailed Midjourney prompts, refining lighting, composition, wardrobe, and textures until each scene felt convincingly photographic.

Execution

Each ad delivered a quick, scroll‑stopping moment: a relatable work reality flipped into its opposite, followed by a simple product truth — Heartland helps you get paid without the chase.

The system included:

  • Photoreal scenes with a human, surreal twist

  • Modular design for trade‑specific and benefit‑specific variations

  • Flexible formats for still, motion, and social placements

This visual direction became the backbone for the entire campaign ecosystem, informing the website, emails, webinar materials, and downloads.

My Role

  • Led creative concept and visual direction

  • Designed the complete paid social asset system

  • Built and optimized the Midjourney AI workflow

  • Developed visual + messaging alignment with copywriting

  • Carried the visual system across the broader omnichannel campaign

Results

The campaign’s bold visual direction paid off:

  • 4%+ click‑through rate

  • 30% engagement rate

Strong signals that the concept resonated deeply with home‑service audiences — and delivered performance above typical paid social benchmarks.

Why It Worked

We translated a functional benefit — faster, smoother payments — into a human truth. The role‑reversal visuals told the story instantly, while the system created a distinct, ownable look that scaled across the entire campaign.

Heartland helps busy teams get paid faster — with less chaos. This campaign made that benefit impossible to ignore.

What I Added

I shaped a cohesive visual system that transformed a complex product story into something human, memorable, and scalable — elevating the full omnichannel campaign and driving real engagement lift.

Introduction

Heartland is a payments and invoicing provider. The campaign targeted home‑service businesses—HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and other field‑based trades—with a simple promise: getting paid shouldn’t slow you down.

I led the creative direction and turned the day‑to‑day chaos of invoicing into clear, human visuals that showed the calm Heartland brings to busy teams.

Role: concepting, design, Midjourney prompt engineering.

Objectives

  • Capture attention in a crowded home‑services feed.

  • Drive qualified traffic to the campaign site.

  • Increase engagement and click‑through versus prior efforts.

  • Build a visual system that could scale across the broader, omnichannel campaign.

Challenge

Home‑service teams move quickly. Their invoicing and payment tools often don’t. Slow payments, manual errors, and scattered workflows pull owners away from the work itself.

Visually, the category lacked distinction. Competitors blended together with predictable stock imagery and generic claims. Heartland had the right tools; the creative task was to communicate the benefit instantly and memorably.

Insight

These professionals do physically demanding work. Long days. Heavy lifting. Constant motion. Downtime is rare, and when it arrives, it’s earned. If we flipped that reality—grounded, relatable, and slightly surreal—we could show the value of “time back in your day” without spelling it out.

Idea

The concept centered on lifelike role‑reversal moments: hardworking tradespeople placed in calm, indulgent environments they don’t often get to enjoy—but absolutely deserve.

A construction worker relaxing in a spa.
A gardener drifting across a pool on a bright float, drink in hand, dirt still on her face.
A burly contractor cross‑legged in a yoga class.
A field tech sipping a piña colada on the beach.

These aren’t gags; they’re metaphors. When Heartland handles invoicing, payments, and follow‑up, people reclaim their downtime instead of spending evenings on admin.

To reach the required realism, I engineered detailed Midjourney prompts and refined lighting, composition, wardrobe, and texture until each scene felt convincingly photographic and emotionally true. The result was a premium, ownable visual language that communicated the benefit at a glance.

My Role

I led the creative concept and visual direction, designed the paid social system, built and optimized the Midjourney workflow, partnered with copywriting on tone and message, and carried the visual system across the website, emails, webinar materials, and downloads.

Execution

Each ad delivered a quick, scroll‑stopping beat: a familiar work reality reversed into its opposite, followed by a simple, legible product truth—getting paid shouldn’t require a chase.

The visual approach favored photoreal scenes with a light, human twist. The system was modular, so we could tailor by trade, benefit, and placement. The same strategy became the backbone for the broader campaign, providing continuity across channels without feeling repetitive.

Results

The campaign delivered meaningful lift across both paid social and the broader omnichannel effort.

  • 4%+ click‑through rate

  • 30% engagement rate

  • 43× increase in marketing‑qualified leads in the first 30 days

  • 14× increase in sales‑qualified leads in the first 30 days

  • 5× increase in deal size

  • 144% increase in product installs

These results reflect the stopping power of the visual direction and the momentum it created across the full campaign ecosystem.

Why It Worked

A functional benefit became a human story. Role‑reversal scenes made the payoff instantly clear, while a consistent visual system created an identifiable look that traveled well across channels.

Heartland helps busy teams get paid faster—with less chaos. This campaign made that truth easy to see and even easier to feel.

What I Added

I shaped a cohesive visual system that turned a complex product story into something simple, human, and scalable—elevating the work across the full campaign and driving measurable engagement.