Securing Attendees For World’s Largest Security Conference

RSAC-2014-theme
Campaign to drive attendance as we had 3 years running

Challenge:

RSA Conference is the world’s largest IT security conference, bringing together computer security experts to network, share ideas, new products, and new ideas. The Conference takes place annually in San Francisco and in Singapore.

RSA Conference began in 1991 so keeping the conference new and interesting and growing and maintaining attendance year over year can be a challenge.

Strategy:

In my fourth year on the account, it was difficult to think of new ways to drive attendance. Email and search marketing continued to be effective channels, helping us do an excellent job of securing repeat attendees but were having less success with prospects. But we needed a way to grow attendance.

Our Approach: We needed to broaden our net, attract new audiences–younger IT practitioners, women, and those interested in IT security as part of their jobs/businesses in industries such as finance and health care.

To attract these audiences, we needed fresh marketing and marketing collateral.

Campaign included emails, banners, mobile and web ads.
Email campaign featuring cryptography and a mystery to be solved
Email campaign featuring speaker and social media game

My Role In The Solution:

I developed a marketing campaign that spanned email, direct mail, web, print, outdoor, and social channels. The campaign centered on multimedia content, images that reflected the audiences we wanted to attract, and infographics that educated and entertained.

I developed the Conference theme–Share. Learn. Secure. I served as creative director, leading visual designers and copywriters to design the Conference marketing collateral, venue signage, street signs, rich media ads, email templates, augmented reality mailers, and infographics.

Each info graphic targeted an audience segment and delivered key messaging on why attending RSA Conference was important in protecting their data, assets, and customers.

Results:

Year-over-year double-digit increase in attendance.