ANNUAL REPORT » DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION » INSTRUMENT

Problem

For a fast-moving brand like Afterpay, staying relevant means producing a massive volume of digital campaign assets at lightning speed. However, Afterpay struggled with a traditional production workflow that was manual, expensive, and difficult to scale. Creating hundreds of variations for different campaigns required significant design hours and risked inconsistencies across teams, creating a bottleneck that prevented the brand from moving as fast as the market demanded.

Solution

Instrument developed a custom, platform-agnostic Figma plugin that acts as a bridge between creative templates and campaign data. The tool allows authorized users to generate thousands of assets instantly by pulling information directly from a structured spreadsheet. Unlike basic automation, this system securely retrieves approved images from Google Drive using advanced authentication, ensuring that only the right people have access to the right files. This creates a “single source of truth” where creative, data, and approval workflows are perfectly aligned within a shared, secure environment.

Outcome

The automation system transformed Afterpay’s production capacity, turning a high-friction manual process into a streamlined, secure operation. On a representative campaign, the tool delivered a 63.6% reduction in production costs and saved over 250 hours of manual labor—a 62.5% reduction in time. By automating the “heavy lifting” of asset creation, Afterpay’s teams were able to maintain perfect brand governance and shift their focus from repetitive execution to high-level creative strategy.