Friday, February 11, 2011

Took a Dog Show to remind me of the most important element of a successful Trade Show


I recently attended a major dog show where I was reminded of the most important trade show lesson.  It was driven home to me by Soupi the owner of Sand Scribbles with her first booth at a dog show.  Not because of any mistakes she made or anything she did wrong as she did neither.   
A little background first. Soupi is an artist and a very good one, a bit unusual in her Sand Scribbles Booth dog showmedium (sand) but an artist none the less. ( www.sandscribbles.net ). Her booth was set up to show off her products in the most positive manner. While she did not have a professional booth she did have an attractive exhibit with many of her products ready for sale. (This show like many B2C shows allows exhibitors to sale from their booths.) Her products feature many dog images and seemed to be a natural fit for this show.
At the end of the show I talked with Soupi about how the show went for her, since this was her first dog show I was curious to get her reaction. Her answer at first took me by surprise, I have 25 years trade show experience and looking at her booth I could not find real fault or any apparent reason as to why she felt the show was not what she expected. I figured, like her this should have been a good show for her products but I forgot the most important element in having a successful trade show.
 

Know your audience

.Sure they were dog people and her products were about dogs and she actually sold Soupi the artistsome of her cards, the Bulldog owners brought cards with Bulldogs on them, the Terrier people brought Terrier cards and so on. The dog owners were only interest in cards with their dogs featured on them and not any other cards.
The lesson is no matter how relevant your product or targeted your audience if you don't understand your audience's basic motivation a great booth presentation will not help. In this case the audience were all dog people but they were “Bulldog” or “Terrier “ or “German Shepherd“ or whatever type of dog they owned people. So on the surface they seemed to have a common interest but upon further examination it was clear the audience was actually fragmented into smaller interest groups.
Had Soupi known this before the show she could have taken steps to address the commonality of the audience without playing into the fragmented groups. Instead of showing a hundred cards with different dogs and designs she could have address the “custom or personal” aspect of her art. She could show how “their” dogs would be used to create a card, message or art work, not by showing all the different dogs she uses but by NOT showing all the dogs. Using a few (as in very limited numbers ) of examples but many examples where the dog is actually missing from the picture. This gives here audience a chance to picture “their” dog in the picture. Their imaginations would have created a buying situation for Soupi that all her samples prevented.
“Your Dog Here” is far more compelling to a Bulldog owner than seeing a picture of a Collie on a card despite the message. It forces the reader to see the message on the card and picture their dog.
What does this lesson mean to your trade show efforts? How can you learn from this when you don't attend dog shows?
The point is to know the attendees not just the audience, what do they have in common is important but what makes them different is more important. It is safe to assume a trade show is going to attract an audience with common interest (i.e. doctors, engineers, programmers, retailers, etc.) but what makes or breaks a trade show is being able to attract the attendees that are most valuable to your business. Knowing the motivation of “Your” target attendees is critical to success.
When you plan your next show ask yourself what do the trade show attendees have in common and what makes them different. Know before hand if you need to address the commonality or the differences then figure the best way to present your message. You do that and I guarantee you will have a successful show.
Don't make the mistake of assuming since it was a consumer show the same rules don't apply to a business to business shows. Not only do the same rules apply but they are magnified in a business to business environment where sales have a longer lead time and effective feedback is a lot harder to get. At a consumer show you know right away if the attendee is a buyer where at a business to business show they may say all the right things while at the show, but it is the follow-up that will determine the final results. Many things can go wrong once they leave your booth. But that is a subject for a different post.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

QR Tags for Every Booth at Art of Home Show

 

There is a first for everything; at the recent Art of Home Show at the Santa Clara Convention Center QR tags were assigned to every booth by the show organizer. The service was managed by Real Intelligence. QR tags are not new and commonly  seen associated with many Internet and mobile related products or services in print advertising.

What makes this different is the fact the tags were for all the exhibitors and managed by Real Intelligence and not each company on their own. Also what made this difference was the attendees to the show did not fit the demographics you would associate to QR tag users (smart phone power users).

I was curious why this show issued them to every exhibitor and who was behind it so I went looking for Real Intelligence to find out the reason. I met Steve Kompolt the CEO of Real Intelligence at his booth and not to be unkind I asked him why this show as it seemed extremely unlikely the attendees at this show would even recognize the QR tag much less know how to access it with their cell phone. In addition not one exhibitor I talked to at the show had any idea what the QR tags were or how they worked. With that out of the way Steve told me the idea behind the choice of show and real reason this was important.

        

Steve's company provides show organizers a complete set of tools for managing their shows and as part on a new service (QR Tags) this show was the beta test of the service. According to Steve it worked as planned, they were under no illusion about the audience's awareness of QR tags but that was not the point the point was to see if they could organize the entire exhibit hall and provide every booth with their own working QR tag. It worked. Maybe it did not have the volume a more technology based show might have had but none the less those who used it got the information unique to the QR tags.

The attendees were taken directly to the exhibitors web site, the sponsors captured important demographics on the attendees who used the service and best of all the exhibitors received another way to connect with potential customers for no additional charge. The service will run for 3 months after the show so exhibitors can continue to use it and take advantage of the service.

Steve's purpose was three fold, to provide the show organizers another tool, provide attendees additional services beyond just being at the show and third give the exhibitors a valuable service beyond the booth space.

Will it catch on, only time will tell. Was it worth the effort to Steve's company only he will know that but at least at the show he thought so. Will we be seeing it at future shows as part of the organizers package to exhibitors? It makes more sense than the free sign they give each exhibitor now, at least it is useful for all parties.

More questions about Real Intelligence or want to get in touch with Steve you can contact him at steve@realintelligence.com.  QR stands for Quick Response and invented by Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave in 1994 for parts bar code.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

CES Booth Designs of Note, The Winners


Normally one show like the CES (2700 booths 140,000 attendees) would be enough for a person to take in one week but for me it was just the start, I also attended the Affiliate Summit West 11, Inter Next Webmaster show and then PPAI (Promotional products show) all in the same 7 day period.  I went looking to see if I could get a sense of “NEW” or “BETTER” not in products, although I did see my share of those but exhibits, displays, signage.  New and better ideas I could pass on to other exhibitors to help them improve their own shows in 2011.
My plan was to have a contest to determine the best and worst examples of trade show displays but after looking at about 1500 booths at CES I decided the worst was not possible and the best was a relative target.  Should Samsung or LG win because they had the biggest most expensive booths (Samsung booth was largest at 28,000 sqft, )LG, Sony, Sharp, Toshiba were smaller but not by much and certainly no less costly.  Cost is not really a fair measure and certainly not very useful for the average exhibitor.  I have pictures of these in the photo section so you can judge for yourself.
What I finally decided to do was to look for booths that “Worked” in the truest sense, they had to be unique, to displayed their products in attractive, none gimmicky ways that brought attention and most important positive feedback from their targeted attendees.  I was not as concerned with booths who put on shows to attraction attention without some way of qualifying the viewers as they were in the “Noise for the sake of Noise” category.  Some such as Gibson guitars showing off their new Firebird X ($4000) guitar with a masterful performance that stopped traffic was quite good and impressive. 
Without a doubt CES 2011 was a success from the show organizers, exhibitors, and attendees perspective this was the best show in years, the “feeling of excitement” was back and not just for a single product (3D TV) or new vendors (China Inc.) but across the board. Big and small exhibitors were happy with the response.

The Winners

The winners were Monitors in Motion (Best Small Booth), Miniwiz (Most Original with the use of materials that relate to their business), House of Marley (Best Themed), MakerBot (Best Mouse Trap)
The Best Small Booth that met my criteria was Monitors in Motions a Canadian company who design and manufacture outstanding looking while functioning desktop monitor mounts from machined aluminum.  These are heavy duty and great looking .  They are more expensive than the dozen or so other suppliers but as far as quality and functionality go there is no comparisons.   What made them stand out was the booth itself. It was built (by them) from the same materials as their monitor arms.  To those in the know you will recognize the back wall is made up of three retractable banner stands. 
Simple clean design that is a perfect compliment to their products.  These arms are perfect for trade show applications with built in security locks, quality construction and “Cool”.  Contact Adam (in photos) info@monitorsinmotion.com.  The iPad arm is $349. .

Miniwiz (Most Original)

Normally when I see a booth that appears to be a gimmick I’m not interested but sometimes it is what it looks like and not a gimmick at all in those rare occasions I take a look and sometimes I’m rewarded with something truly creative.  This is the case with Miniwiz (Sustainable Energy Development LTD, Taiwan ROC) really that is the full name and that is what they do.  The booth structure, its solar lights, furniture, sound system are all products of the company. 
Their products are the Polli-Brick (plastic bottles 100% post consumer) making up the structure, the Solarbulb LED lamp cap turns old bottles into lamps, Dynamo Hub Charging system and power converter work off the power hubs built into many performance and premium bikes, Bioluminescence Lighting and The Peanut (musical furniture using Apple products round out the product line.  The company can be reached at www.minwiz.com.

House of Marley (Best Themed)

Bob Marley’s family has launched eco conscious lifestyle products including electronics, watches, sunglasses, bags alone the themes expressed (and lived) by Bob Marley’s and his music.  With his music as the background the booth came alive with a sprit and feeling not normally felt in a trade show booth.  The feeling and atmosphere was more like a party in a festive home than a electronic show booth.  The products were everywhere but not “in your face” as displays are at these shows.  Laid back comes to mine but that would down play the upbeat sound and feeling in the booth.  I went back to the booth several times each day of the show and each time the party was still rocking.  I spend time in the booth watching peoples reactions and everyone who entered was “moved” to become apart of the party. Maybe it was the Marley name but it is hard to imagine anyone doing a better job with a theme than House of Marley (www.thehouseofmarley.com) and the products lived up to the billing.

MakerBot (Best Mouse Trap)

You know the expression “Build a better Mouse Trap” and the world will beat a path to your door, you also know that it does not work.  Well I’m here to tell you I saw first hand an exception to the rule.  MakerBot Industries of Brooklyn shows up at the CES show hangs two banners on the back wall sets up three long tables in a U shape puts its “factory” on the front table.  In the 10X20 booth the sole product took up about 1 sqft of space. No signs listing features and benefits in fact only the product, Isaac Dietz along with his laptop and a few product samples were all that was in the booth.  Unused tables and chairs don’t count nor does the shrink wrapped pallet in the back since they clearly were not used for anything.
Anyway what Isaac was demonstrating was MakerBot’s factory in a box. This device is actually  a 3D printer it prints (builds) solid objects from plastic using your designs and their program to drive the printer.  The little figure you see beside the machine is one of their “print” jobs. The red plastic strips (under the bottom of the machine) spool up into the printer as needed.  The device with optional spooler as shown is around $1300.  No kidding.  Apples first laser printer was $3000 and all it could do was black and white single sided  text prints (no graphic) this thing can make a cup, art objects, parts, prototypes, anything small enough to fit in the machine (when finished).
Clearly the booth did not attract any attention and while Isaac was knowledgeable and enthusiastic he was not the draw so obviously it was the product itself and only the product.  Not many products could pull it off at a show like CES where thousands of other products were competing for attention.  To MakerBot I have to say it took real nerve (or lost booth) to display the way you did at CES and pull it off.  Due to the constant crowds I was unable to talk directly with Isaac to get his feedback on the booth and show. 
I would not recommend following their example in booth design it is a little risky if you don’t happen to be showing a table top factory.  MakerBot’s web site is www.makerbot.com to the geeks out there this thing really works.  There is clearly a WOW factor associated with this product and their booth. 

For more on the CES products see my post on products.