2023 JOLT CONFERENCE
Building an event people didn’t just attend... they experienced.
Creative Direction • Event Brand Strategy • Experiential Design • Visual Systems
IT STARTED WITH A JOLT.
Jolt began with a simple challenge: create a financial marketing conference that felt nothing like a typical financial marketing conference.
Snappy Kraken wanted the same energy people associated with its brand, but Jolt needed an identity of its own. I proposed the name Jolt! around the idea of bringing fresh energy to an industry that desperately needed it.
From there, my Creative Director and I helped build a brand designed to evolve. The Jolt logo and core palette would remain recognizable year after year, while each conference theme could create an entirely new visual world.
2023
WHAT IF THE MARKETING FELT A LITTLE TOO... ROBOTIC?
For 2023, the conference centered on bringing life back to financial advisor marketing.
We took that idea literally.
If generic language and formulaic marketing were making advisors sound robotic, we could build an entire experience around the transformation from mechanical to human.
That tension became the creative foundation for the year—from robots, machinery and blueprints to sketches, unfinished ideas and bursts of color that made everything feel like it was actively coming to life.
ONE IDEA. AN ENTIRE VISUAL LANGUAGE.
Once the concept was established, we built a system flexible enough to carry it across the conference.
Mechanical illustrations, technical grids, HUD-inspired frames, hand-drawn marks and a high-energy palette gave us a visual language that could shift between polished and imperfect, digital and tactile, robotic and human—without losing the Jolt identity underneath it.
THEN WE TOOK THE IDEA OFF THE PAGE.
Once we had the world, every touchpoint became another opportunity to bring it to life.
The system stretched across the attendee journey—from the website and pre-event materials to signage, badges, programs, presentations, environments, screens, sponsor experiences, staff apparel and even entertainment.
Nothing needed to look exactly the same. It just needed to feel like it belonged in the same world.
500 ATTENDEES. ONE CONNECTED EXPERIENCE.
AND THEN WE MADE THE IDEA MOVE.
Some parts of the experience couldn’t live on a page.
We worked across creative, video and animation to carry the robotic-to-human concept into the conference’s storytelling—from the promotional trailer to the opening sequences and Jolt logo reveal.
For the logo introduction, we imagined traveling inside a robot whose energy was failing, moving through its machinery until a single jolt of power brought it back to life.
My Creative Director and I developed the concept and story, she storyboarded the sequence, and we worked with an animator to bring it to life.
IF IT COULD FEEL MORE LIKE JOLT, WE WENT THERE.
Once we knew what Jolt 2023 was, the fun became finding all the places the idea could show up.
A workbook became an old-school composition book. An opening sequence got rewritten to bring the robotic storyline into it. Entertainment, environments, screens, presentations—even what the team wore became another chance to make the experience feel more connected.
We didn’t have a massive agency or an enormous creative team behind us. We had a small in-house team, a really good idea and a habit of asking, “How can we make this feel more like Jolt?”
And apparently, people noticed.
“Tell me about the coolest conference you’ve been to. So far, mine is Snappy Kraken’s Jolt conference. The opening reception hasn’t even started yet, and I’m blown away. The people. The design. The significant attention to every teensy detail. Snappy Kraken truly practices what they preach.”
Jolt! 2023 Attendee