Equitable NAPEO Tour Conference Event

Role
Creative Director

Function
Campaign + Brand Development | Event Creative | Email Marketing | Strategy + Design

Objective

Develop a fully integrated conference campaign for Equitable's debut sponsorship at NAPEO's 2025 Annual Conference in Austin, Texas, building awareness of Pooled Employer Retirement Plans among a new-to-401k PEO audience, generating qualified leads, and deepening partner relationships through an immersive brand experience that carried from the first pre-conference email to the final booth interaction.

First-time sponsorships carry a specific creative challenge: you are introducing a brand to an audience that does not yet have a frame of reference for you. At NAPEO 2025, Equitable needed to show up in a way that was immediately memorable, strategically clear, and unmistakably on brand, all while competing for attention at one of the PEO sector's most significant annual events.

The creative solution was The Equitable Tour, a music-inspired experiential concept rooted in Austin's identity as a live music capital. The campaign positioned Equitable as the headliner, its retirement and employee benefits products as the set list, and conference attendees as VIP guests with backstage access. The concept gave the team a rich, flexible creative platform that carried consistently from the first pre-conference email through the booth experience, printed materials, promotional gifts, and post-event follow-up.

The campaign spanned four email touchpoints, a conference deck, booth creative, print collateral including a PEO Insider magazine ad, and branded promotional merchandise featuring locally crafted, monogrammed leather goods from Austin artisans.

The four emails were designed as a sequential journey, each placing the recipient at a different moment in their conference experience. The first arrived like a tour poster discovered on a street wall, bold and eye-catching, pulling you in with the promise of what was coming. The second found you at your desk, the poster now carried home, your notes spread out as you prepared to attend. The third put you on the conference floor, standing in front of the booth itself, inside the experience. The fourth caught you at home after the event, unpacking, another poster in hand, the tour still resonating. Each email was a distinct visual chapter in the same story, designed to build anticipation, deepen engagement, and extend the emotional arc of the campaign well beyond the three days in Austin.

A spin-to-win activation at the booth drove engagement and lead capture, while VIP cocktail receptions and hosted dinners deepened relationships with key partners and prospects.

Every deliverable carried the same visual energy, connecting the Equitable brand to the excitement and culture of Austin without losing the clarity and professionalism the financial services audience required.

The results confirmed the campaign's impact. Across three pre-event emails, open rates climbed with each send, from 30.28% on the first email to 33.09% on the second and 32.58% on the third, consistently outperforming industry benchmarks. Click rates told an even stronger story, rising from 2.62% to 4.25% and peaking at 8.01% by the third send as anticipation for the event built. Delivered rates held above 98% across all three emails. On the ground in Austin, the campaign generated 220 qualified leads, a strong result for Equitable's appearance at NAPEO and a clear signal that the creative platform resonated with the PEO audience it was designed to reach.

Campaign + Brand Development | Creative + Strategic Direction

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