Equitable: Bringing a refreshed financial brand to life through storytelling

Project Background

In 2023, Stryve partnered with Equitable to refresh its brand identity and prepare for a digital-forward future. After completing the rebrand, the next step was to bring it to life across multiple channels with a strong creative presence. Over the following three years, Stryve led a full-scale brand campaign program that introduced the refreshed Equitable brand to Canadians, strengthened its presence in the advisor community, and created the digital foundation the organization needed to shift into a more modern, future-ready brand presence.

This became a multi-year creative and strategic partnership across Stryve, the Equitable team, and Oak + Rumble. Together, we built a human-centred brand experience that reached audiences across multiple channels and created a clear emotional identity for the new Equitable brand.

The program spanned four major phases. Each represented a turning point in the evolution of the brand and introduced new creative directions and ways of connecting with audiences.

The Challenge

Equitable had an opportunity to introduce its refreshed identity in a way that felt modern and relatable. Like many longstanding financial institutions, much of its past marketing had been rooted in traditional channels. The new identity created space for a more contemporary presence that could speak to current and future generations of Canadians.

Equitable also wanted to strengthen its relationship with advisors. Advisors play a central role in shaping client experience and are essential to how the brand is understood in the market.

This was the organization’s first significant investment in paid digital marketing. This created the opportunity to build a strong data foundation that would support long-term strategy and provide new insights into the audiences engaging with Equitable’s content.

The Opportunity

A refreshed brand has the strongest impact when it is felt, not just seen. The campaign needed to introduce the brand, educate audiences, and create meaningful emotional connection. To differentiate Equitable from competitors, the team took a more casual and warm approach with a docuseries captured in a raw, unscripted format featuring real employees.

Stryve also established a digital marketing program from the ground up. This included setting KPIs, building dashboards, defining reporting cadences, and completing comprehensive retrospectives after each phase. Paid media created the scale and precision needed to reach advisors, clients, and future customers, in the channels where they spend their time. With every phase, we gathered data on targeting, platforms, messaging, and creative performance, then used the insights to iterate and optimize future work.

The Strategy

Over the course of three years, Stryve led a multi-channel creative and digital program that carried the brand through four phases. Each phase built on the one before it, implementing continuous testing, learning, and optimization.

Stryve acted as the creative and project management lead across all partners. This included:

• Coordinating shoots
• Managing timelines
• Creative direction
• Messaging
• Building the campaign landing page
• Asset creation, from concepting to final delivery

We also launched campaigns, managed budgets, and led all reporting and ongoing optimization once in market.

The result was more than 250 creative assets launched. Phase 1 alone included 252 assets with 14 videos and more than 200 static and animated variations, showcasing the scale of creative production and the level of coordination required to maintain quality and consistency.

Phase 1: Brand launch and education

Phase 1 introduced the refreshed brand and established the foundation for what the new identity represents. The goals included building anticipation, owning the narrative around the rebrand, strengthening awareness, and encouraging employees to participate in the rollout.

Stryve collaborated with Innertainment to create a full suite of content including teaser announcements, brand reveal videos, narrative content, and educational pieces.

The paid pilot launched across LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter with conservative budgets so we could test and scale responsibly. In four months, the work delivered an engagement rate of 8.4% and more than 1,400 new social followers. This early momentum set the stage for the next phase.

Phase 2: Launching the Moments Matter docuseries

Phase 2 introduced the Moments Matter docuseries, a collection of 14 long-form videos featuring individual stories from people across the business. This marked the first major creative expression of the brand after launch. The goal was to deepen advisor awareness and strengthen their connection to the refreshed identity while giving all audiences a grounded understanding of what the new brand embodies.

Stryve partnered closely with Oak + Rumble to bring the series to life. Oak + Rumble led all production and post-production. Stryve collaborated with Equitable to direct the creative vision, shape the narrative, prepare interview subjects, and ensure alignment with long-term campaign goals.

To avoid the formal tone common in financial marketing, the creative choices were intentionally casual and approachable. Interviews were unscripted. Real employees shared real experiences in open conversations that revealed the values behind the brand. Each video captured personal moments that reflected Equitable’s commitment to client experience and collaboration.

The Moments Matter campaign was developed to create value across all lines of business—from group benefits to individual insurance to investments to recruitment. By anchoring in a concept around deeper brand values, Stryve strategically built a flexible creative asset library from an initial set of video shoots, enabling the message to evolve, compound, and underpin multiple campaigns over three years while maximizing long-term ROI from that shoot.

Phase 3: One brand voice brought together

Phase 3 built on the storytelling introduced in the first two phases but shifted the structure. Instead of highlighting individual stories, the creative combined multiple voices to reinforce the idea of togetherness.

By weaving clips from different interviews into unified narratives, the videos demonstrated how the entire organization supports clients and advisors. The work made the brand feel cohesive and reinforced the belief that Equitable’s strength comes from people working together.

Phase 4: Social native creative with targeted messages

Phase 4 introduced the most advanced stage of the campaign. The creative became more dynamic with faster pacing and captions designed to feel natural within social feeds. The look and rhythm of the videos were optimized for the way people engage with content on social platforms.

This phase also introduced highly targeted messaging. Creative variations were built specifically for clients, for advisors, and for broader audiences. While the values remained consistent, the message and emphasis shifted based on the needs of each group.

Creative scale and deployment

Across the entire program, Stryve led planning, creative direction, asset production, and digital execution across hundreds of deliverables. This included coordinating multiple shoots, managing timelines across partners, and producing a continuous stream of creative across all phases.

Our work included:

• 250+ creative assets over 3 years (video, static, and animated)
• Vendor coordination for video production
• Multi-channel campaign strategy and deployment
• Landing page creation
• Custom reporting dashboard and ongoing performance tracking
• High-spend budget management
• Strategic enablement partner, building internal understanding of PPC while supporting executive alignment and preparing Equitable to bring capabilities in-house

This level of output required strong project management, detailed coordination, and a team of efficient managers, designers, and senior leaders with a clear strategic vision.

“Google Display alone required around twenty dimensions for every static ad. It was very easy for one creative flight to turn into more than one hundred assets. With deliverables at that scale, we needed a smart process. We always started small and secured sign off on a single ad before producing the full set of variations and sizes. We also looked for opportunities to use technology to reduce manual production. We explored tools that helped us generate dimensions more efficiently. My goal was to establish directions so the team could execute confidently. We had to divide the work and stay strategic to deliver such a large output.”

– Brent Morrison, Senior Graphic Designer

Results and impact

Through the Brand Announcement and Moments Matter campaign, Equitable established a modern, people-centered brand that resonated with audiences across Canada. The program strengthened brand recognition, built an emotional foundation for the refreshed identity, and provided a digital data set the organization can continue to build on.

“We activated across five platforms with multiple publishers and a full mix of video, static, and animated creative. Some platforms had several targeted audiences, so even though it was one overarching brand campaign, it often felt like we were running a dozen campaigns at once. Upwards of 300 ads went live, and each one represents a long path of concepting and exploration before reaching approval. This was the Cadillac of digital brand campaigns and the scale of what the team delivered is something we are incredibly proud of.”

– Sara Kohan, Digital Marketing Manager

The creative helped Equitable show up with greater clarity and humanity in a crowded market. It also supported the entire business by reinforcing corporate values that influence every service line. Beyond marketing, increased awareness strengthened recruitment by helping potential talent understand the brand’s purpose and values.

Most importantly, the program created a modern digital foundation that Equitable can now carry forward. It established a clear tone, a flexible creative model, and a set of insights that will guide the brand for years to come.

A successful multi-year partnership

The multi-year partnership between Stryve, Equitable, and Oak + Rumble created a brand experience that felt modern, human, and grounded in the values behind the refreshed Equitable identity. The work demonstrated how a legacy financial brand can build meaningful digital presence by sharing authentic stories from the people who shape the organization every day.

Over 3 years, the team brought the brand to life through storytelling, strategy, digital execution, and large scale creative production. The program demonstrated Stryve’s ability to manage complex, multi-platform initiatives that support digital transformation and long term brand evolution.

This partnership created the foundation for how Equitable now communicates with its audiences and set the tone for a more modern and digital-forward future.

The intent was to invest in brand first, knowing that a strong, emotionally resonant brand would underpin and amplify every line of business over time. After 3 years of sustained brand investment, Equitable has begun to build familiarity, trust, and a clear perception of who they are independent of any single product or service.

That foundation now allows them to layer in more targeted, line of business, and digital campaigns without starting from zero each time. By continuing to balance brand with more segmented activation, Equitable can show up more relevant, more credible, and more consistently across audiences for years to come.

After three years of collaboration, Stryve’s partnership with Equitable has laid a strong foundation for their in-house capabilities. Through phased campaigns, pilot programs, and Moments Matter, Equitable gained the experience, knowledge, and confidence to expand their internal team, develop new roles, and take full ownership of digital and brand initiatives, demonstrating the lasting value of investing in a strategic, long-term approach to digital marketing.