AFA Warfare Symposium by Accomplices

Who Accomplices is and why they brought us in

Accomplices is the creative agency behind the U.S. Air Force Armament Directorate's event presence. The Directorate exhibits at the Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) Warfare Symposium, and Accomplices' job is to make that booth work harder than a table of brochures. Accomplices brought Fri3nds in as their Webflow and interactive team. The Directorate's world has strict rules: a detailed brand guide, set typefaces, approved colors, and content that has to be exactly right. Accomplices owned the relationship and the message. We built the pages, the kiosk and the event assets that carried it.

The challenge: turn a booth into meetings

The Warfare Symposium page had one job: turn interest into scheduled conversations with the Directorate's team. We built it in Webflow on the events site we already ran for Accomplices, with a meeting request form feeding their HubSpot and a thank you page for every path in. Then the page kept changing, the way real campaigns do. On the morning Accomplices sent an email to drive traffic, they needed new copy up fast, announcing a contractor on-ramp opportunity and inviting visitors to sign up at the booth. It was the first time they had matched the Symposium with an on-ramp, so the copy had to be big, yellow and live as soon as we could slot it in.

• 1 landing page built to drive meeting requests with the Armament Directorate team
• 2 thank you pages (online form and booth QR code) so every lead had a path

How we built a kiosk that works without the internet

The centerpiece at the booth was an interactive kiosk: a tall touchscreen where visitors explore the Directorate's priorities, targets, framework and programs through animation and video. Accomplices needed it to run offline, independent of the venue's connection. So we built the kiosk in Webflow and shipped it as an offline package, a folder that opens in Chrome on a portrait 4K screen with no internet at all, plus written install steps. That choice made every change harder. A new video, a copy fix or a new QR code meant a new build. We lightened the screensaver video, added swipe arrows so visitors knew the targets tab was a carousel, trimmed the video list, and rebuilt the package each time.

How we supported the show from the other side of the screen

On the first day of the Symposium, the client spotted a typo in the kiosk. Accomplices' team raced to the booth, and our team stood by from the other side of the screen. Because the kiosk ran offline, there was no publish button to press: a fix meant editing the downloaded build or loading a new one on site. That's the tradeoff of a kiosk that doesn't depend on the venue's internet. The same day, we caught the events page failing to feature the event in progress. In the days after the show, we fixed it and made the listing smarter for every show to come: a live event now stays featured until three days after it ends.

What happened after the show

The Symposium came back around, and so did Accomplices. For the next show we designed the creative itself: three style directions for the Directorate's show graphics, reviewed with Accomplices and pushed closer to the Armament Directorate brand guide round by round, with more contrast, more patriotic color and the booth number in yellow. Word came back from Accomplices that Tesa loved the creative. We updated the kiosk and its quiz, launched a new meet-us page with its thank you page, and kept a developer on call the weekend the show opened.

• 3 years of event work with Accomplices, show after show
• 3 style directions for the Directorate's show creative, refined round by round

Credits

• Agency of record, client relationship and messaging: Accomplices. Tesa Lau, Lexus Johnson, Natasha Riou
• End client: U.S. Air Force Armament Directorate
• Event asset design (badges, flyers, tabletops): Gabe and Rocco (RNR)
• Webflow development, offline kiosk, event pages and show creative: Fri3nds (Esteban, Richard, Franco, Nico, Terry, Jaime, Serggio)
• Services: Webflow development, event landing pages, HubSpot form integration, interactive touchscreen kiosk, offline kiosk builds, event design assets, on-call event support