San Miguel Rich List

Designed a content-led campaign to drive engagement and brand visibility

San Miguel partnered with two major UK publishers (The Standard and Independent) to create the Rich List — a branded editorial campaign designed to engage audiences through storytelling while subtly reinforcing brand identity. The San Miguel Rich List recognises incredible men and women who have dedicated their lives to pursuing the most valuable thing of all: experience. The campaign included the Rich List selection with promotion and recruitment on the website. I created and developed the UX, UI and visual design of a multi-channel digital experience spanning web, mobile and social.



UX / UI
WordPress website
Social marketing

The challenge

Branded editorial presents a key tension:
  • Users want authentic, engaging content
  • Brands need visibility and impact
    • The challenge was to design an experience that:
  • Felt editorial-first (not advertorial)
  • Encouraged deep scrolling, interaction and ease of use
  • Integrated San Miguel branding in a natural, non-intrusive way

My approach

Designing for engagement I created a scroll-led narrative structure that:
  • Broke content into digestible sections
  • Used strong visual hierarchy to guide users
  • Encouraged continued exploration through pacing and layout
    • This approach was designed to increase:
  • Time on page
  • Scroll depth

Overall content engagement

Balancing brand and storytelling to avoid disrupting the user experience:
  • Branding was woven into the design system, not overlaid
  • Visual styles complemented both editorial tone and brand identity
  • UI elements were designed to feel native to the platform

The process

The website process involved creating a colour scheme, creating wireframes and mockups. This continued onto development, browser testing and user testing.       


Motion-led content for distribution

I created motion assets and social content to support campaign rollout:
  • Designed for high performance across social platforms
  • Focused on grabbing attention quickly in fast-scrolling environments
  • Extended the campaign beyond the core microsite
  • I created several social media plotagraph videos and Facebook 3D images using various methods. In terms of the Facebook 3D images, I created depth-maps from flat images and uploaded to Facebook. For the videos I utilised After Effects particle effects on flat images to create eye-catching movement.

Multi-device optimisation

The experience was designed with a mobile-first mindset, ensuring:
  • Smooth, responsive layouts across devices
  • Readable, accessible typography
  • Optimised image and motion performance

Outcome

  • Delivered a high-impact branded editorial experience aligned with both user and business goals.
  • Created a scalable design approach for multi-channel campaign rollout.
  • Supported increased audience engagement through structured storytelling and motion-led content
  • Over 15.8k page impressions
  • Over 3.6k total engaged minutes
  • increased overall awareness of The Rich List by 223%
  • 39% more likely to drink San Miguel
  • Over half who saw the campaign agreed it differienciated San Miguel from other beer brands

Key takeaways

  • Strong editorial design can drive measurable engagement when paired with UX thinking.
  • Subtle brand integration leads to better user experience and stronger brand perception.
  • Motion and social assets are critical for extending campaign reach and performance.

Source: Adobe Analytics, MR Perspective on-street interviews, ESI-Q powered by YouGov

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