While attending Globalshop, the annual U.S. version of the Euroshop Retail Trade Show, I noticed a common trend as I walked the aisles.  I was surrounded by booth staff  who were more content to look at their cell phones or talk to their colleagues than to engage attendees like me.  If only exhibitors understood the value of well trained booth staff and how they can impact trade show ROI.

 

I was recently invited to speak to the members of the National Fire Sprinkler Association.  Why was I there?  A few years ago a member of the association management group attended one of our trade show marketing seminars, “60 Tips in 60 Minutes,” and she asked me to re-present this material to the NFSA.  Although my topic focused on event marketing and trade show displays and is hardly related to any technical aspect of their businesses, I found a very receptive audience eager to learn more about how to better manage their face-to-face marketing and trade shows.

I may be the least qualified person in the industry to comment on the state of trade show exhibiting but hey!…it’s my blog!  So here goes...

I’m on my way back from Exhibitor 2013, the annual trade show for trade show displays and exhibiting.  From my time spent in Las Vegas, here are some surface takeaways:

• Lots of back lit fabric graphics

• Fewer hanging trade show signs.  Designers are building more from the ground up to avoid the rigging costs.

• Trade show lead management and pre/at/post show promotional products are maturing.

• More cantilevered exhibit designs due to the light weight graphics and evolution of new architecture.

Behind the scenes there were many comments about a tight market, especially on either coast.  Conversely the middle of the country seems to holding its own, with manufacturers still exhibiting to show their stuff.

The annual meeting of NYC & Company, the travel and tourism department for the city of New York, was held on February 20^th 2013 at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center.  The news was ALL good!  In 2012 NYC & Company met its 2015 goal of over 50 million tourist visitors to New York City!  Already in 2013 hotel bookings are 11% ahead of last year, and most notably for the New York trade show display designers, the Javits Center and hotel venues attracted 300,000 more trade show attendees than Las Vegas in 2012.

This past week, in an effort to seek opportunities to merge trade show display marketing techniques with the new social online tools, I attended the Social Media Action Camp at Steelcase headquarters at Columbus Circle in New York City. 

The highlight of the day for me was presentation by Ekaterina Walter of Intel.  Her overview on the status of marketing and the convergence of social media and traditional marketing only reinforces the timeliness of our own new seminar geared to  trade show display managers, “New World Marketing”.

The verdict is in!  The Secret Shopper report, published by trade show management of the NACS show (National Association of Convenience Stores) is just published.  And the winner is…Nestle Waters of North America!  Chosen as among the “Best of the Best” for both marketing clarity and best exhibit staff, Nestle Waters had their best NACS show ever. 

The exhibit, designed and produced our New York Trade Show Display designers at Skyline Genesis Event Marketing, featured a

Are you "reactive" when planning for a trade show?  When the show comes around, do you find yourself scrambling to address last minute details and logistics on top of your normal day-to-day responsibilities?  If so, you are not alone.  Many, if not most, trade show exhibitors are reactive in their approach to trade shows...

At two recent event marketing and trade show exhibit industry conferences (EventTech in NYC and the annual Exhibit Designers + Producers Association (EDPA) meeting in Palm Springs, California) the new world of cooperative competition or “coopetition” was clearly evident.  This was most clearly illustrated during the awards ceremony at EventTech.   Awards were given in more than 10 project categories ranging from “Best Online Program” to “Best Live Event”.  None of the awards were given to a single event marketing or trade show exhibit company however.  As the nominees and eventual winners were flashed on the screen each project featured at least two and often three or four collaborative firms who partnered to produce a successful program. 

What did this show?

I recently spent two very “mind-bending” days at the EventTech meeting held at the New World Stages in New York City.  One after another tech marketers took a stage to tell a case history featuring creative solutions to promotions and trade show/event marketing, all of which included some cool application of technology.  It’s understood the presentations are actually “shameless self-promotion”, but who cares (there was content there too!)?  The end result is we all saw the best solutions to delivering memorable experiences to event and trade show attendees.  We are seeing the convergence of virtual and face-to-face marketing come alive, powered by the explosion of apps, AR (Augmented Reality), literally thousands of social media platforms and projection technologies to name just a few.

Many of the projects featured big budget solutions, so the challenge now seems to be how do we deliver affordable tech-based tools to all the businesses not in the Fortune 500?

The annual EDPA (Exhibit Designers and Producers Association) once again delivered an insightful and thought-provoking look into the ever-changing trade show exhibit and event business.  The association clearly tends to favor the issues and concerns of the traditional and larger custom house side of the industry…and rightfully so.  The big boys pay the bills.  However, the accelerated rate of change evident in the face-to-face marketing world, and the impedance of technology into trade show exhibits and corporate meetings, points to a deeper, more fundamental shift.