Creative Lead — MENA

Creative built to mean something. شاكر رأفت — قائد إبداعي

I shape brand identity, motion, and digital campaign strategy for the brands defining the region — Visa, Tabby, Siemens Energy. Strategy and craft in the same pair of hands, with a growing command of AI-driven production.

Scroll to explore
VisaTabbySiemens EnergyErza3Brand StrategyMotion DirectionGen-AI Creative VisaTabbySiemens EnergyErza3Brand StrategyMotion DirectionGen-AI Creative
About نبذة

Ten years turning big ideas into bigger results — from Cairo to the global stage.

I'm a Creative Lead at Visa, consulting the region's banks and digital banks on creative strategy — diagnosing the gaps in their digital channels, building the strategy to close them, and upskilling their teams through workshops. I also lead Visa's generative-AI creative initiatives, cutting production time by up to 70%.

Before Visa, I defined the motion-design language for Tabby as it scaled into the region's most valuable fintech, and reshaped the global creative strategy for Siemens Energy Week. Earlier, I co-created Erza3 — one of the most-watched Arabic sports-entertainment channels in MENA.

Bilingual Arabic-English, with deep market and cultural fluency across the Gulf. I work across the full arc: strategy, art direction, motion, and AI-driven production.

10+
Years
1.5M+
Erza3 subscribers
70%
Faster with Gen-AI

Selected Work

A few of the projects that shaped brands, campaigns, and audiences across the region.

01
Visa — Banking Partner Creative & Gen-AI
Visa · 2025
Replace · Visa case visual

The Challenge

Visa's banking and digital-banking partners across MENA had strong products but inconsistent, underperforming creative — and limited in-house capability to fix it.

The Strategy

As creative consultant, I diagnosed each partner's gaps, built tailored creative strategies, and ran hands-on workshops to upskill their teams — so the improvement outlasted any single campaign.

The Outcome

Reduced creative production time by up to 70% through gen-AI workflows, while raising the strategic clarity of partners' digital channels.

02
Tabby — Brand Motion System
Tabby · 2022–25
Replace · Tabby motion system

The Challenge

As Tabby scaled from 4M to 14M users and hit unicorn status, its motion language had to stay unmistakably Tabby across web, social, in-app and large-format retail.

The Strategy

I defined and evolved a single motion-design system — timing, easing, iconography and 3D language — that any execution could draw from.

The Outcome

A consistent identity for the region's most valuable fintech, deployed everywhere from the app to mall screens across KSA and UAE.

03
Tabby — Product Launch Campaigns
Tabby · 2023–25
Replace · Launch campaign stills

The Challenge

Each new product — long-term financing, the freelancer offering — needed a launch that explained a new concept fast and drove sign-ups in a competitive BNPL market.

The Strategy

Concept-to-delivery creative for each launch: a clear visual hook that made an unfamiliar financial product feel simple and desirable.

The Outcome

Campaigns rolled out across digital and physical retail in UAE and KSA.

04
Tabby — Partnership Campaigns
Jarir · Taweeq · The Chefz
Replace · Co-branded suite

The Challenge

Co-branded campaigns had to satisfy two brand systems at once — Tabby's and each partner's — without diluting either.

The Strategy

Flexible creative that held Tabby's identity while flexing to each partner, keeping a consistent campaign spine across very different brands.

The Outcome

Partnership campaigns that drove sales performance for both sides.

05
Tabby — Saudi National Day
Tabby · KSA
Replace · National Day campaign

The Challenge

The most crowded creative moment of the KSA calendar — every brand competing for the same cultural space, where tone-deaf work gets noticed for the wrong reasons.

The Strategy

A campaign rooted in genuine cultural understanding — celebrating the moment authentically rather than bolting a logo onto national symbols.

The Outcome

A culturally resonant campaign that strengthened Tabby's local relevance in its most important market.

06
Siemens Energy Week — Strategy Refresh
Siemens Energy · Global
Replace · Energy Week identity

The Challenge

A flagship global event whose creative had long suffered from inconsistency and weak relevance to its audiences.

The Strategy

I reshaped the event's creative strategy end-to-end and worked with stakeholders across multiple countries to localise messaging — landing in each market while staying on-brand globally.

The Outcome

A cohesive, relevant identity that finally matched the scale of the event, for a brand operating in 90+ countries.

07
Erza3 (ارزع) — Channel Co-Creation
Arcade · MENA
Replace · Erza3 channel + subs

The Challenge

Build a new Arabic sports-entertainment YouTube channel from zero in a crowded space — and make it stand out enough to scale.

The Strategy

Co-created the channel as Arcade's flagship product, owning content production and contributing to its creative direction and storytelling.

The Outcome

One of the most-watched Arabic sports-entertainment channels in MENA — now past 1.5M subscribers and 300M+ total views.

Capabilities القدرات
01

Creative Strategy & Direction

Brand positioning, campaign platforms, and the creative thinking that ties business goals to work people remember.

02

Brand Motion & 3D

Motion-design systems, 3D, and animated asset libraries built to stay coherent at scale.

03

Gen-AI Production

AI-driven creative workflows that compress concept-to-delivery without losing craft.

04

Multi-Channel Campaigns

Concept through delivery across social, digital, in-app and large-format retail.

05

Team Enablement

Workshops and creative leadership that raise the capability of in-house brand and design teams.

06

Bilingual AR–EN

Culturally fluent creative for Gulf audiences, on-brand globally and resonant locally.

Contact تواصل

Let's make something
worth remembering.

s.raafat.s@gmail.com
LinkedIn Behance Vimeo Instagram