ExpoId BLOG

New workbook for better exhibitions

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:11:00 GMT

Expo-id published “It’s your baby. Workbook for better exhibitions”. The book keeps rookie exhibitors on track when preparing a trade show participation and inspires experienced exhibitors to get more from their investment in trade shows.

There are dozens of reasons why exhibitions fail to give sufficient return on investment. Lack of preparation is often the most important burden on exhibition profitability. That is why exhibition industry experts Gerard van Os and Christophe Landuyt created a workbook that looks much like a pregnancy calendar: every two weeks the reader/exhibitor turns a page to take a next step in the preparation process. The publication guides its readers through the entire preparation process, triggers creativity and puts all important issues relating to trade show participation in a 9 month timeframe.

The authors previously published Dutch and French versions of the workbook. “It’s you baby. Workbook for better exhibitions” has 48 pages, costs 25 euro and can be ordered from the website www.expoid.be.

Show buzz

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:30:00 GMT

I love the way many Americans talk about trade fairs. For starters, they talk about trade shows, which just sounds like much more fun. And they talk about ‘pizzazz’: there should be an awful lot of pizzazz in and on and around the booth. There is hardly another word in Webster’s dictionary that has the same rich and varied meaning. Sure, you could talk about excitement and flamboyance, but they just seem poorer than pizzazz in way or another. Pizzazz is all the things that make people want to come to and stay at your booth. (And that is NOT staff reading newspapers or show catalogues and people hiding behind laptops. I’m sorry to nag about it again…)

Here’s another concept Americans often use: show buzz. The buzz they talk about is not a buzzing air conditioner or a fluorescent lamp. It is what goes around at a show. The industry rumors? Sure, but much more than that! Wherever many people gather, there is not only a lot of talking (about others), but especially a lot of exchanging ideas, visions and opinions on what is going on in the industry. Show buzz is much more than plain gossip. It is everything that happens during the show and that is difficult to pinpoint: unexpected encounters, moments of inspiration, the warm feeling of belonging to a group, giving and absorbing refreshing ideas… Show buzz is not about a stage and a bunch of dancers with feathers in their butts, it is not about celebrities who make a guest appearance and come to shake hands, it is about the way one tries to take home some of the incredible richness a good trade show has on offer.

Show buzz is immaterial, so difficult to photograph. However… During the most recent edition of the trade show for home textiles Heimtextil in Frankfurt, I was able to shoot this little scene. It illustrates perfectly what show buzz is about: a group of professionals gathering around an imaginary campfire with a bunch of pattern books to discuss what design will be hip in the next season.

Wish you were here…

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:42:00 GMT

What did we use to do, in former days, when abroad? Right, write postcards! An dif it depends on the international upholstery tradeshow MoOD, that is exactly what we will be doing again. During the last edition, organizer Textirama installed 6 displays with free postcards in 6 crowded areas. All of the cards in one way or another referred to the show:

“I’m in a winning mood

Touch wood, but I just ran into a winner at MoOD in Brussels. Keep the secret ‘till I get back.”

“I’m in a globetrotting mood

Let’s start getting used to jetlag… I’ll tell you more when I’m back from MoOD in Brussels.”

Next to the postcards was a flashy red mailbox. And the best news: no stamps required. Organizer Textirama took care of postage and dispatching of the 2,000 postcards.

Off to ExpoPolis...

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:18:00 GMT

“Here we go again…” That was my very First thought as I saw the ExpoPolis press release. “Yet another website that claims to be the ultimate platform for virtual shows.” I probably yawned slightly. Some ten years ago, during a conference in Prague, I was offered a CD-ROM with plug-in software to attend virtual shows on my very own computer. I never did ; I was to busy rebooting my computer time and again because of the plug-in.

Over the last 10 years, much has changed. At least, that was my conclusion after I had seen the ExpoPolis demo on Youtube: a futuristic ‘building’ with much less futuristic booths and hardly futuristic presentation concepts: virtual brochure stands, virtual LCD screens, virtual pediments and virtual columns to serve as eye-catchers. The only things I was missing on the site were (paying) cloakrooms and restrooms.

There was a time when show organizers were scared to death because of the internet and its endless possibilities to exchange information and communicate almost for free. They considered the worldwide web to be a serious threat to their own businesses. Meanwhile, most of them have – sometimes reluctantly - changed their mind: show organizers actually use the internet to make their events even more powerful and agenda-setting.

The question is worth a small reflection: should show organizers (and the entire exhibitions industry) embrace virtual fairs or not? I am inclined to some reserve. For my 11 years old nephew behind his Wii-console, it does not matter whether the gun-shooting rabbits are virtual or real. But how about his 41 year old uncle? Will he soon have to admit that he lost touch with today’s technology? Is there a crypto-Luddite hiding deep inside of him?

A few years ago, an industry promotion campaign by the Association of Exhibition Organizers was acclaimed throughout the world. Central theme of the campaign and reason for the applause: “I saw it, heard it, tried it, tasted it, felt it…at an exhibition”. Some of the graphics showed a dozen of verbs that relate to different types of interaction in an exhibition booth. If I were to summarize them I a single word, I would probably use the verb ‘to experience’. People go to exhibitions to experience things. In fact, by now we all use the trendy concept ‘experience marketing’, don’t we? And it is exactly experiences that virtual exhibitions are not particularly good at. Sure, there is a (virtual) exhibition area, and sure, there are (virtual) exhibitors, but in the end, it all boils down to exchanging e-mails and pdf-files and movie snippets. A platform like ExpoPolis offers the possibility to ‘install’ a host in the booth and have live chat sessions, but I very much doubt this will bring the experience for the visitor to a higher level.

A platform for virtual shows? Fist I think “Here we go again!”, afterwards I think “O, we will see…” and in the end I think “Why not?” But in the meanwhile I will definitely continue to insist on touching that fountain pen before I buy it.

Always faster. All the time

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:55:00 GMT

The closing press release of Gamescom was eagerly awaited. The first edition of this combination of trade show, conference and event for interactive entertainment and gaming had received over 245,000 in five days: 17,000 trade visitors on the first trade-only day; 228,000 visitors in the four following days; 1,500 delegates to the Games Developers Conference and 4,000 press representatives. Not surprisingly, the 458 exhibitors were delighted with the huge success of this première. Cologne – and the German Hanseatic cities in general – are used to crowded exhibitions; they tend to count show visitors per ten thousands and net square meters often as well. But such an explosive start as Gamescom had never been seen before. Most shows start slowly and it often takes the organizer years of hard work to reach cruising speed. But not for Gamescom. The event moved to the top of the list from day one. Even in a downward economy…

I do not know how much effort Koelnmesse had to make to fill the 120,000 square meters of Gamescom. What I do know, is that they grabbed every opportunity to make Gamescom an event with a high value of experience: trade visitors were very enthusiastic about the Gamescom Awards in several categories and the conference on the influence of gaming in society. The general audience – gamers, that is – was offered a vast menu of exciting extras: a Gamescom Beach with beach sports, catering and gigs; a Gamescom Camp for cheap accommodation; presence of (German) celebrities at the show; concerts and stunts downtown Cologne and at the Tanzbrunnen venue…The entire city was abuzz with Gamescom.

After the show, Koelnmesse said they had created the largest (trade) show in the world for (interactive) entertainment. That is more or less true, - it all depends on where you put the brackets or not. The Nuerenberg Spielwarenmesse has five times more exhibitors, but it is a trade only event and attracts ‘a mere’ 75,000 visitors. What is absolutely very much true, though, is that Koelnmesse succeeded in creating an exceptional event with a very high value for a rather demanding audience. It had enough momentum to develop the trade show axis from scratch and become immediately the industry reference for the gaming niche. In the past, it took an organizer years and years to reach that level. Today, everything apparently goes a lot faster. Pretty much like those games, I guess…

Why show organizers love banks

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:16:00 GMT

“Business as usual.” I was rather surprised to hear that answer from the head of the sponsoring department of large Belgian bank. I had asked how the sponsoring department had experienced the financial crisis, assuming that sponsoring & events budgets would have been the first to cut when banking business gets tough. I was wrong. Over the last 12 months, this bank – KBC, not to mention the name – remained prominently in the picture during sporting and cultural events. It is a question worth asking: what does one have to think of a bank that needs state warranties from one side, and, at the very same time, spends (part of) its money on sponsoring?

Remark # 1: many of the sponsoring contracts date back from way before the financial crisis broke out. This bank maintains the out together home together principle: they try to build long term relationships that can stand difficulties. When either of both partners experiences tough times, the other one increases the efforts. Sometimes it is the bank which does so, sometimes it is the show organizer. KBC tries to hook into the very concept of the event and create added value for it. The entente this strategy creates can stand very rough weather. Even a financial crisis.

Remark # 2: in most of the sponsoring deals KBC concludes, money is not the most important aspect. From the organizer’s point of view, the bank’s communication machinery is often most important asset: it has several channels to reach over 3.9 million consumers in Belgium and another 8 million abroad. And, more importantly, the bank employs competent people that know how to develop various messages for various target groups. In Belgium, most of the banks have a fairly good reputation. The financial crisis might have brought some doubt in the mind of some people, but it did not thoroughly change the image of banks in general.

I have to admit that KBC understands show organizers well. They know what they want and they know how they, as a bank, can supply. KBC was the first bank to make a deal where the KBC bank card gave free entry to the holder. Great deal for the show organizer who benefits of a free visitor promotion campaign. Great deal for the exhibitors, who saw plenty of new visitors at a very busy show. Great deal for the visitors, who get in for free. Great deal for KBC, which could create extra value for their customers. Why did no one think of this before?

If you visit plenty of exhibitions and events and you take a closer look at things, you are likely to learn a thing or two. For example that there are no ATM’s at festival sites and – unfortunately – at a number of exhibition venues. As a visitor, you have to walk outside the event perimeter, to the nearest village or the high road, to get some cash. And how about exhibitors who sell a lot in their booth? At the end of the day, they have to walk down a parking lot carrying a plastic bag of cash. KBC had a trailer convert into a mobile bank where visitors can withdraw money and exhibitors can deposit money. They installed it at open air festivals and exhibitions. All exhibitions? No! The operating costs for the mobile bank are to high. KBC made a selection of events, based on the number of visitors, their diversity, the reputation of the event and its social acceptability. There are ‘only’ 13 events selected for 2009, although every other day new request come in. It looks like all show organizers are eager to make life easier for their visitors and exhibitors.

This smells of...aroma marketing

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:27:00 GMT

The first principle was: if they can do it in a shop, they can do it in a booth as well. All major brands perfume their stores to make consumers feel happy and buy things. So why shouldn’t we do that in the booth too? In the booth, much like in a store, the (potential) buyer is present with all his senses. In order to score, you have to trigger those senses, - preferably all at the same time. Including the nose. Or rather: trigger olfactory perception. That starts with not eating garlic when you are working in a booth. But does it have to stop there?

The olfactory nerve is one of the twelve cranial nerves that are directly linked to the brainstem, the ‘oldest’ part of human brains. Of all our perceptions, olfactory sensations follow the shortest route to the mind and they cannot be manipulated during their course. Olfactory sensations are what they are, even when they are subconscious. In marketing terms: aroma is the invisible hand that moves us in the direction the Great Aroma Sorcerer wants us to go. We do not quite understand all the mechanisms that lay behind it, but scientific research revealed it just works. The dentist uses aromas to calm down his patients, the homes for the elderly to cheer up their residents, offices to keep the working rhythm at a high level and supermarkets to make us feel hungry. And in a booth? Would it be possible to use aromas in a booth to bring visitors in a certain state of mind. In the end, the answer is yes!

The Swiss company Air Creative has made neutralizing smells and adding perfumes its specialty. Call it air refinement or aroma marketing, whatever. They developed a broad range of appliances for several circumstances and they only use natural scents based on essential oils. So not just a deodorant spray that vaguely reminds of lily-of-the-valley and actually makes you sick, but slowly evaporating aromas with real bergamot oil and citrus. It sounded very promising to me. The Belgian agent at Elandir Care came to our offices to explain how the system works and how to operate the appliance. That’s it? Not quite… That we wanted to use the appliances in a booth, appeared to be a bit of a problem. As an exhibitor, I could be perfectly happy with the scent of green apples in springtime, but how can I keep that scent within the boundaries of my own booth? The aroma of a summery cornfield may very well suit in my presentation concept, but what about the neighboring exhibitor?

Air Creative and Elandir decided to take a closer look at the matter. A few weeks later, they came with their verdict: aroma marketing in a booth is possible, provided there is a thorough analysis of the operating conditions: what sides of the booth are open, how does the air flow through the exhibition hall and through the booth, which zones of the stand need intensive perfuming… Based on this analysis, one or more appliances are calibrated to suit the needs. It is a bit of an exercise and it is a bit awkward in a fast business like stand construction, but I am convinced that it is worth the effort. Aroma marketing works…

Pit girls galore

Tue, 26 May 2009 15:28:00 GMT

Some people have fabulous jobs. Take, for instance, Jacqueline Hassink: between 2002 and 2008 she visited all major car shows to take pictures. Not of the cars on display, but of the ladies and girls alongside the vehicles, who help sell them. While all the other photographers had their eyes on the brand new bolides, Jacqueline was focusing on the GMC-girls, the Citroën chicks and the Lexus-ladies. All portraits have been bundled in a luxury coffee-table-book called ‘Car Girls’. What’s in a name?

Browsing through Car Girls, one learns a few things. There are hardly any differences between the ways a car is presented in Detroit, Geneva, Shanghai, Frankfurt or New York.: preferably on a low stage, surrounded by bright light and blinking like a supernova star. Occasionally you will see a vehicle that is displayed in front of large picture suggesting a sporty or adventurous lifestyle, but these are exeptions. More often than not, anything that could divert attention from the vehicle is banned from the booth.

Surprising as well: visitors to motor shows – sometimes they appear in the background of Hassink’s pictures – are rather similar to one another, whether they live in Shanghai, Frankfurt or New York. Most of the time they are 40-ish or 50-ish, male, with the first signs of a beer belly and often armed with a digital camera of which they only know the basic functions. Apparently, their interest for the heated rearview mirror of Maserati is much higher than their interest for the female species that circle around the car. If you have a rather distant and merely functional relationship with motorized vehicles, it is hard to understand motor show visitors…

So how about the girls? After all, this is what the book is about. Hassink’s publication is not a sociological essay. If you buy it with the idea of unraveling the secrets of (car)consumer behavior on three continents, you are in for a disappointment. Most of the pictures confirm what we have known for a long time: brands like Chevrolet or Lexus confirm their image of business chique by dressing all the girls in dark suits; Japanese brands tend to stress their technological edge and dress their girl in futuristic outfits; German brands, when exhibiting in the Far East, want their models to be as blonde as possible; French constructors always seem to be in doubt between the fragile Lolita style and the liberated Amazon style. Often, where the show takes place is much more important than who is exhibiting in that local market. Shanghai is bit more kitschy than Frankfurt. The Chinese ladies’ main mission is to install themselves as elegantly as possible on top of the vehicles. In Detroit, the ladies get a microphone and are supposed to sing the praises of the vehicle they are standing next to. In Geneva and Frankfurt, the microphone is replaced by a portable pc that allows to place orders and specifications online. Eastern esthetics against western functionalism? Perhaps. Anyway, the book is rather amusing, because it reveals something about the way motor companies look at themselves, about how they look at local markets and about how they think they can translate these elements into women’s outfits. The result is not always flattering, - not for the motor company, not for the potential buyer, nor for the ladies who have to actually wear the outfits.

And yet… Pit girls have become part of popular culture around the globe, - in the first place at motor shows. They have become, in a way, inseparable. That is my conclusion after a strange incident last week. I had made a list of 5 hints to make exhibitions more profitable. One of the hints was: ‘Make a picture of your booth and try to look at it through the eyes of a visitor? Is it immediately clear what this company wants to say? Are the user benefits obvious?’ By mistake, the hints were e-mailed to a talented cartoonist. This is how he interpreted the hint…

Business as usual?

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:23:00 GMT

Surprise # 1: this year’s French agricultural show SIA in Paris closed its doors with 670,000 visitors counted, an increase with 10% compared to the previous edition. However, a considerable number of exhibitors had cancelled their participation in the months before the show. The visitors apparently didn’t mind and showed up en masse.

Surprise # 2: after two days of professionals only, the Belgian building show Batibouw counted a record number of trade visitors. The Belgian building industry, however, is at it’s last gasp and contractors don’t stop complaining about poor business. Luckily it did not stop them from visiting their trade show.

“We shouldn’t be surprised”, said Annie Arsaut-Mazières of the French trade association Foires, Salons & Congrès de France in an interview with Nouvel Economiste. In times of uncertainty companies prefer a certain and known way to get in touch with existing and new customers. In a downward economy, a trade show is an excellent place to do (some) business.

The thesis of Annie Arsaut-Mazières is tempting. Trade shows are the number one tool for small and medium-sized companies. Large industrial corporation can use an repertory of tools: print campaigns, radio and television advertising, lobbying and public relations, direct marketing and webvertising… Often several of these tools are used simultaneously. And when the economy goes down, some or several are separated from the others. Smaller companies have to be more selective when using communication tools – in good times and in bad times – and they have to watch very closely the return on investment of the different tools they use.

A downwards economy always inspires to some reluctance. Everyone in business is likely to feel that. Companies scale down their budgets and it takes a bit longer before the signed reservation is on the fax. Exhibition organizers feel the hesitation as well; they have to increase the efforts and energy to convince companies to exhibit. Every now and then, they companies who cancel their initial plans. But as soon as the doors of the exhibition hall open, it is business as usual. Because, from the visitor’s perspective, everyone has so much faith in exhibitions, says the FSCF director. And because, from the exhibitor’s perspective, it is the only feasible communication tool for small and medium-sized enterprises. She could be right, - although these are two completely different things.

Are trade show participations the only feasible tool for small and medium-sized enterprises who face recession? I hope not, because they need plenty of other communication tools to make the trade show participation successful. Not in the way and not to the extent large corporations use them, but nevertheless. We should be worried when even more companies take part in exhibitions without any budget for communication and visitor promotion.

Do managers – managers of small and medium-sized enterprises especially – have faith in exhibitions? It would be great if this would indeed be the fact, but then again the question is: what is this faith based on? Not on carefully verified figures, I think. Over 60% of French exhibitors do not formulate precise targets when taking part in an exhibition. An even larger percentage ‘forgets’ to measure results. Could their faith be based on intuition? Probably, yes. Whatever the industry, whatever the size of the company, a trade show is always a bit of a festive industry get together no one wants to miss. That is an asset – no doubt about that – but that does not relieve us of the duty to find well calculated, verifiable and reliable figures on the return on investment of trade show participations. It is, in fact, the only way to prove that exhibitions work.

Something to learn at the Asia Fair

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 11:38:00 GMT

It is a mistake we all sometimes make: being so interested by what happens all over the world, that one does not see what happens in one’s backyard. It happened to me, actually. I cannot live with the idea that there is a show in Cologne or Paris I am not familiar with, but at the same time there has been a small fair for four years in the town where I live, within walking distance.

The community center De Zandloper in Wemmel has been hosting the Asia Fair, a special interest fair for Asia fanatics, which had its 18^th edition last February. This event of Belasia is special in more than one respect. Is it a travel fair? Yes and no. Is it a commercial fair? Yes and no. Is it an information fair? Yes and no. Is it a fundraising event? Yes and no…

The Asia Fair has about 100 exhibitors of all kinds: embassies and airlines, not for profit organizations from the developing aid sector and tour operators, importers of Asian food and publishers, cultural organizations and importers of handcraft… Together, they occupy the entire capacity of the Zandloper venue for a weekend. Visitors come from Belgium, Holland and France to the small village hidden north of Brussels.

Asia Fair’s main target audience are people who have been bitten with Asian fever, either because they were born or raised there, or because they have traveled to Asia before and liked it. I do not belong to any of those categories and yet I had a very nice time indeed at the Asia Fair. The reason is simple: the event had everything a good event should have:

-Information: Not just another travel guide that is published in tens of thousands of copies, but real people who have been there and done that. Hey tell passionate stories on how they sailed down the river Mekong or why Borobodur is best at sunrise. Information that is hard to find. Reliable, tailor-made and with a zest of exclusiveness.

- Entertainment: Every community center has at least one auditorium with a large stage. During the Asia Fair there was never a dull moment on stage: Balinese dancing, typical gamelan orchestras, acrobatics… And off-stage as well, there was plenty to see and live: greasepaint make-up for the kids, initiations in origami, tai-chi, henna tattoos… For a neophyte like me, even the cup of noodle soup was a special form of entertainment.

- Transaction: You, me, everyone who visits fairs, wants to come home with a small trophy. It doesn’t have to be a house, it doesn’t have to be a yacht, but it should give you the feeling that you really made the bargain of the week. At the Asia Fair, visitors could buy Thai rice, oil from Siam, handicraft from Nepal, Tibetan garments etc. The neophyte saw, tasted and bought…

- Recognition: There was a warm, friendly and genuine welcome by the Belasia volunteers for all the visitors to the Asia Fair. Even the people in the catering outlets and the booth staff were friendly and good-natured. The Asia Fair has a very relaxed and happy atmosphere. And visitors feel that. One of the purposes of the event is to raise money for humanitarian projects in Asia. A warm welcome and a broad smile proved to be very effective to trigger gifts from visitors. Even from neophytes who visited the event for the very first time…

Genuflect (show some respect)

Tue, 27 May 2008 08:53:00 GMT

An attractive exhibit is an exhibit that takes on the perspective of the potential user and gives a convincing answer to the question “What’s in it for me?” Usually, in training courses, this is step one: urging exhibitors and booth staff to leave their classic point of view behind and to look at their own products and services with the eyes of the customer. It takes same effort, it takes some time, but once you are there, it is very rewarding. And, yes, you can take that literal: booths that take the customers’ perspective will attract more visitors and sell better.

There are a few tricks that help booth staff to take on and maintain the customer’s perspective. One of them has to do with the position one takes vis-à-vis a visitor. Counters, information desks and even tables are very tempting to form an opposite constellation: the booth worker and the visitor face each other. Their physical position confirms their role: one of them is a supplier, the other one a (potential) buyer. Even if the message in the stand is all about partnership, their position towards one another suggests the contrary.

If you want to stress the idea of a partnership with a (future) customer, the best thing to do is to align with the visitor: get next to him or her, shoulder to shoulder. In this way, you both “look” at a problem from the same side. Being side by side is the physical translation of what you want to achieve in a business relationship with the customer. You want to convince him or her that you as a supplier will be there to face the problems he may encounter and to think of solutions you can offer.

I developed this idea during a training session for Volvo Construction Equipment on the eve of the machinery trade show Intermat in Paris. Most of the audience were Volvo CE dealers from around the globe who would staff the 3,000 sqm stand. All of them were experienced salesmen, with their own habits and techniques. And yet, the impact of the training session was significant. All key team members left their little counters to get closer to the visitors. And I even caught one of the guys squatting next to a visitor to browse the product catalogue together.

Thrilling demonstrations

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:47:00 GMT

It has become an essential part of all training courses: a call upon all trainees to take some distance from their own products and services and to assume the perspective of potential users. Most of the time, the audience will react with a ‘yeah, sure, what’s next?’ type of reaction. When a few months later, I take a tour of the show, I am usually in for several disappointments. Most of the exhibitors stubbornly stick to their supplier’s point of view. No one talks about user advantages. No one has the guts to take a wee little bit of distance.

In March, I was in Utrecht for the Techni-Show, a biannual tradeshow for industrial supplies. A well organized show, I must say. A lot to see, a lot to experience, plenty of opportunities to refresh professional know-how, animated discussions on hot topics… Techni-Show offered all that is needed to satisfy visitors. The only problem is that most of the visitor satisfaction was provided by…the organizer. There wasn’t all that much experience or thrill in the over 400 booths. In fact, most of them were rather dull. In my eyes, at least. I am not a technician. I can’t tell a pump from a valve and I do not need any industrial supplies, so I am not really in the target audience. But I do have the right to be entertained as a visitor, don’t I? Anyway, I was surprised twice during this last Techni-Show.

Imagine you are selling welding robots and take part in an industrial trade show. Showing how the welding robots actually work is not an option because of the security measures in the exhibition hall. Any alternatives? Sure! You could fix an intricate workpiece and let the welding robot elegantly dance around the edges. “Look! All the time, the arm is at exactly 3 millimeters distance from the edges!” Or you could make it even more exciting and install two welding robots and let them ‘dance’ together without ever touching each other. It may very well freeze walkers-by who watch the ballet for a few seconds.

If you are a bit daring, you could install a welding robot with to the left a full crate of lager (in this particular case it was Heineken, I believe) and to the right of it an empty crate. The welding arm takes bottles from the left and fluently puts them in the right crate. And after 24 bottles, it starts going the other way around. Big deal!

(doc. Jaarbeurs Utrecht)

End of the line? Not yet! At the Techni-Show the company RFA Rijlaarsdam from Zwijndrecht had a Kawasaki robot as eye catcher. The robot not only solved the Rubick kube on its own, it could also predict how many turns left until the cube was completely solved. Twenty movements to go…15 movements to go….5 movements to go… You could actually see the visitors silently check the number of movements. And you could see the surprised expression on their faces once the puzzle was solved. To bad there was no booth staff to address the audience once the demo was finished. So much for the effort…

Now, let us go for the ultimate, in this particular case exhibitor Motoman Benelux from Breda. They too sell robots and at the Techni-Show they really wanted to do something fun with their engines. So they let two of their robots play a game of ludo at the booth. On their own, without any human interface, in a glass showcase. The robots did not seem to mind the crowds gathering around the game to check whether both would observe the game rules. (And they did!) The demo left visitors almost breathless, until Motoman booth staff addressed them to tell that the robots could actually do plenty of other things. Perfect opener for the conversation, well timed and most probably very efficient too.

(doc. Motoman)

Tell me a great story

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Tell me, and I will know.
Show me, and I will understand.
Involve me, and I will remember.

These three lines are in every handbook about learning processes. And I guess there is a good number of human resources managers who have this maxim nicely framed in their office. It is an anonymous proverb, there are a dozen versions of it, but they all bopil down to this one idea: the higher the involvement of the receiver in a communication process, the higher the impact of the message. As an exhibitor, one wants to maximize the impact of the message with relevant target groups. Ergo, exhibitors and their booths should go for the third option: Involve me, and I will remember.

When during exhibitor training courses I bring up the theme ‘experience’, many attendees get a bit nervous. If I say that exhibition concept X or booth layout Y offers little experience or experience value to visitors, I immediately get a very defensive reaction: “Our budget does not allow us to…” Another time, the excuse would be that the audience consist of (very) technically skilled trade visitors or the company does not meddle in games.

Companies who take themselves very seriously often forget to take the visitor seriously. That is: they are much more concerned with their own products and processes than they are concerned with the needs and expectations of potential customers. Any marketer knows that leads to trouble. Yet, that is often what happens at trade shows. As a visitor, one often gets the impression that it is actually a privilege to be allowed to watch the products on display. That is at least what self-centered exhibitors try to make visitors believe.

And then there is that other counter-argument: our target audience consists of engineers. They prefer a technical explanation rather than interaction. Completely wrong, of course! However professional and serious a visit to a trade show may be, it will always be a day out at the same time. Ideally, as a visitor, you experience plenty of things to tell about afterwards, at home or in the pub. Exhibiting is a story telling activity: give your visitors a good story and they will tell it to others. And if you are a show organizer, you benefit from the ‘story value’ that is created by your exhibitors. They turn visitors into ambassadors of your event, who in turn will generate yet more visitors. The stronger the stories are, the more visitors will feel involved with the event.

The counter-argument I hear most often during training sessions is that the participation budget does not allow to create interaction with the audience. As soon as exhibitors hear the words ‘interaction’ or ‘animation’ or ‘experience’, they think of Barnum & Bailey campaigns and the corresponding budgets. Is there another way? Of course there is! The only thing you have to do, is to take a little distance from your very own products or services. That usually takes a bit of courage. And a bit of self-criticism as well. And a lot of creativity! When you really want to impress vistors, creativity will get you a lot further than a huge budget.

During the last edition of the Brussels Holiday Show, I saw some fine samples of visitor interaction with a high experience value. In the booth of the Swiss Tourist Authority, visitors could engage in a soccer challenge, referring to the European soccer championship of next summer. The action was fun to do and fun to look at. A lot of buzz at the booth of Guadeloupe too, where visitors could make their own (Belgian) chocolates. The island started growing biological cocoa and wants to get the message across that it is a healthy place to stay and have holidays.

The award for the most charming – and cost-effective! – visitor interaction goes to the booth of the Japanese embassy however. Two dexterous collaborators invited the passers-by to join them while making an origami figurine. It looked like great fun for the visitors, who could take their piece of art home (and tell the story about it!). And it had only cost a box of folding paper…

A loving spoonful

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:14:00 GMT

The exhibition industry has a) some very skilled doctors, b) very powerful remedies and c) a high number of patients who refuse to take the drugs and who apparently refuse to pay the bill. It was one of the conclusions of the UFI Focus Meeting ‘Best Practices in Exhibitor Training’, held on 23 November in Milan.

I was surprised to learn that since 2002, Fiera Milano has its own Accademia employing 15 people who have made it their mission to train exhibitors, develop studies and publish their findings to the benefit of businessmen and young professionals. With much the same objectives, the Czech venue Trade Fairs Brno has an Expo Academy that is aiming at developing a win-win-win situation for exhibitors, show organizers, venue owners and visitors. In neighboring Hungary, the trade association AHEFO (Association of Hungarian Exhibition and Fairs Organizers) tours around the country with its most experienced professionals to help first time visitors correctly prepare and implement their trade show participation. And then there is a great many individual trainers, many of whom I met in Milan, who take whatever opportunity to make exhibitions work (better).

Considerable efforts, very effective tools, a number of patients – over 60%, according to a recent UFI survey – who are reportedly ill and who refuse to take the medicine… How do you solve that problem?

When, as a young boy, I was a bit ill, my mum would take two teaspoons and crush an aspirin between them. Then, with one of the spoons, she would take a spoonful of strawberry jam and mix it with the ground aspirin. I would no longer object to the administration and accept the now tasty medicine gladly.

I used the image of the ‘loving spoonful’ to explain that we probably need to look for new formulas to train exhibitors. We have to leave schoolish formats to find a more attractive way to administer the medicine. I called it gift-wrapping exhibitor training: if you have been around in your industry for quite some time and you are considered an experienced professional, you do definitely not want to be sent back to the school desk because you plan to take part in an exhibition.

Most of the people I spoke with have not yet found a way to make training content more attractive or sexier. Maybe you have a few suggestions…?

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I love Chinese (especially awake ones)

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:48:00 GMT

One square meter of booth space at Anuga, the world’s leading trade fair for the food industry, costs approximately 190 euros. And that does not include all the usual trimming you might need for a large exhibition. Luckily, as an exhibitor, you get something in return. During the 5 days of the show, Anuga is visited by over 160,000 professional buyers from all over the globe. The show is their most important buying moment and the most important place to find new products. Beef from Uruguay, pink beans from Kentucky, olivewood roasted coffee, honey chews, energy drinks with added aphrodisiacs… You name it, Anuga has it.

Booming China rented a complete exhibition hall at this year’s Anuga, good to accommodate over 400 Chinese exhibitors. But not all of them were as busy as an exhibitor should be at such a busy (and buzzing) show. Was it a jet lag? Was it the stodgy German cuisine? Was it that last glass of Kölsch lager? We don’t know. But we sure hope mister Li deeply enjoyed his one and a half hour catnap.

Just for fun, we calculated what sleeping during exhibition hours actually costs. His booth was 12 square meters: 12 x 190 euros = 2,280 euros. In general, naked booth space is 20% of the total expenses: 2,280 euros x 5 = 11,400 euros. Anuga lasts 5 days, with 8 hours of show time each. One hour of Anuga cost 11,400 : 40 = 285 euros. A 1.5 hours forty winks costs 427.50 euros. I guess that even in Cologne you can find a comfortable bed for that price.