TSMI's Trade Show Marketing Report

Display Marketer Victimized By Competitor's Click Fraud

John Carreras, President of Impact Displays, a trade show display manufacturer in Silicon Valley, was recently vicitimized by his competitors. Apparently, Carreras, who used pay-per-click ads to market on several search engines, noticed that he was paying thousands of dollars in SEM for little payback. Then while he was at an industry trade show, the PPC traffic slowed down. He found out why.

Marketing Sherpa has the rest of this intriguing story. (Note, link is free only through August 7).

After reading, my first thought was, "Wow, who knew anyone in our industry was that sophisticated!"

And I'm talking about the scammers, not just Carreras.

WebTrends: Good Analytic Tool, Lousy Exhibitor

This week's GasPedal newsletter came in a few minutes ago.

Considering WebTrends is a tool built for marketers, you'd think they'd be better exhibitors than this.

Then again, the organizer could have helped them with some sage advice on best practices.

Branding Smackdown: Godin vs. Ries. Loser: McDonald's.

You, fellow event marketer, have life easy. You only need to worry about one brand message. Sure, you may require tactics that converse to differing verticals to deliver that message, but it's essentially the same message: Your event = X.

Not so your customers. Or at least some of them. Well, maybe just a couple. All right, only McDonald's.

There's a new term being bandied about. Brand Journalism. It is not positioning. At least not as you were taught. Or maybe it is. Sort of.

Larry Light, Chief Marketing Officer of McDonald's, introduced this 'concept' at the recent AdWatch conference (link pops as pdf). According to Light, "Any single ad, commercial or promotion is not a summary of our strategy. It's not representative of the brand message. We don't need one big execution of a big idea. We need one big idea that can be used in a multidimensional, multilayered and multifaceted way."

Over the past three weeks, this 'concept' has been discussed at great length by just about every brand guru. After reading a bunch of comments on it, I think there are three camps. The first is Larry Light's. The second is Seth Godin's, who thinks there's an opportunity (albeit requiring some signficant tweaking), and the third isLaura Ries's take , which is more traditional. (Godin's brief comments are nicely elaborated upon by Jennifer Rice at Mantra).

I tend to agree with Laura Ries on this one. I know I'm not going to McDonald's for meetings, nor do I know anyone who is or would. McD's is for kids. Always will be. The guys over at Marketing Playbook suggest that McDonald's follow the Chuck E. Cheese strategy for neighborhood get-togethers.

Again, not for me nor anyone I know. Heck, I don't even go to Starbucks for meetings. That's for, um... Starbuckians. You know who I mean. (I will go to a local coffeehouse or bar, however).

As for the argument itself, yes, I'm Lovin' It.

But we have bigger things to worry about. Don't we?

Fake Blogs as a Marketing Tool

If you wonder about the power of blogs, here's a lesson in real time. Bungie Studios, in advance of the release of its Halo2 game, has launched a blog called "I Love Bees" that offers fascinating - and somewhat disturbing - insight into the power (and abuse of that power) of blogs to pre-sell a product.

The premise of the ruse is that some old lady's web site, from which she sold honey, was hijacked by malicious web site crackers. A niece named Dana is trying to solve the problem by going to China (?) and started a blog to get others to help her figure out the mystery behind the site hijacking. Within both the I Love Bees website and "Dana's" blog are clues which have something to do with characters and plot lines from the original Halo game.

It appears that Bungie may have also had help from Microsoft, creators of X-Box, in perpetrating this ruse.

Within its first week of existence, almost 1000 people have commented on the blog. That amount of traffic for a brand new blog is unheard of. Funny thing is, although the ruse was caught almost immediately, it appears that a large majority of commentors continue to be sucked into believing "Dana's" innocence. The whole saga is also in play on IRC and of course, a hundred other blogs run by gamers, marketers (you're reading it here) and conspiracy theorists. All of which increases the search engine rankings of "I Love Bees" and Halo, which in turn, increases traffic to those sites. Which in turn should increase sales. Provided the inevitable backlash doesn't get out of hand once everyone knows they've been duped.

This isn't the first time a company has perpetrated a fake blog for marketing. The fake blog for Dr. Pepper's Raging Cow pissed a lot of people off way back in March, 2003. But the viral component of that anger on sites as mainstream as Fark didn't seem to affect sales and in fact boosted product awareness. Still, few corporations have tried to market this way.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out how to create this much anxiety over a ruse to promote to a show or conference. But if I ever do, you'll hear about it.

Follow-Up: Dallas Bookings "Suck". Is the Brand the Problem?

Phillip Jones, head honcho at the Dallas CVB, appears to have more candor than his contemporaries.

When asked how hotel bookings were going this year in Dallas, Jones simply answered, "They suck."

Dallas, which launched it's "Live Large, Think Big" campaign a few weeks ago, finds itself in a difficult position. The convention center isn't large enough to handle the top tier of shows over 400,000 nsf that go to Vegas, Orlando and Chicago, and there are a growing number of "destination" cities like Phoenix and Denver expanding their convention centers to compete with Dallas on events in the 100,000 to 400,000 nsf range.

While trade show attendance nationally fell off by 10% or more following 9/11, hotel bookings in Dallas in 2002 decreased by almost 50% from 1999 levels, from 1.68 million room nights to 874,000 in 2002 and 900,000 in 2003.

You have to credit the Dallas CVB for opening its books to hotels and making a commitment to transparency and partnership with the hotel community. But Dallas has its work cut out.

They're competing not only against the very top tier of convention cities and the next level of cities that are expanding their convention centers, but also against Houston and San Antonio and even Austin in their home state.

Which is why I have doubts about the effectiveness of the city's "Live Large, Think Big" campaign. I think that messaging does a nifty job of selling Texas, but not necessarily Dallas. And it may even work against Dallas.

First off, in the current climate of sputtering economic recovery and Sarbanes-Oxley, few event planners are "Living Large." If anything, there is considerable pressure to not "Live Large" in meeting environments.

So that's a bad start. But what about "Think Big"?

Let's play word association. What words come to mind when you think of the following areas?

a) Texas
b) DFW
c) Metroplex
d) Dallas
e) Houston
f) San Antonio

My answers: a) Big and Dusty. b) Big and Delays. c) Big and Asphalt. d) Big and Hot. e) Spread Out, Humid, NASA. f) Alamo and Riverwalk.

That's four 'bigs' a 'spread out' - and Houston's lack of zoning is almost charming in itself - and some noted tourist attractions (none of which are in Dallas). So what is "Live Large, Think Big" accomplishing?

When I think about Dallas, I think about my own city's issues with image. I believe that folks who continually dump on Pittsburgh have never ventured out of downtown. There are great neighborhoods here with street activity, ethnic restaurants, coffee houses and interesting shops. But they're not right downtown. So the typical conventioneer never sees them. And in many trips to Dallas, I personally have never been in any neighborhood, save Deep Ellum, which is a fun place.

In an area as large as the Dallas, I think it's incumbent upon the CVBs marketing arm to 'personalize' the place. The Metroplex is not only huge in area, it gives the impression of a strip mall the size of Rhode Island. Thousands of signs from every franchise chain known to man can be seen from any of the interstates leaving the airport. Which tells the average visitor they could be anywhere in the U.S., except for the fact that it's flat, and other than winter, very hot.

I was talking to some folks at a recent show industry meeting who were singing the praises of Fort Worth for events up to 100,000 and how great a sales and logistics operation Fort Worth had. I've heard from numerous folks in the past few years about how much they enjoy Houston and the George Brown convention center. Austin is an automatic choice for mid-sized tech events. And San Antonio has history and romance, charms notably lacking in Dallas.

I personally don't enjoy flying into DFW and driving for what seems like forever to get anywhere (although it's closer to things than Denver's airport, which feels like it was built in Nebraska). Love Field is closer to town and easier to navigate, not unlike Chicago's Midway airport, preferred by most travellers over O'Hare -when there's an option to choose. Dallas could do itself a favor by getting more flights into Love Field.

Texas does have a recognized history of creating bigger than life (and opportunistic) individuals. Dreamers who made their fortunes in oil and cattle and energy and land. And perhaps that's what the Dallas CVB meant by "Live Large, Think Big." But the execution is lacking.

We've all heard the song, "Deep in the Heart of Texas." Where is the "heart" of Texas? Geographically it's probably pretty close to Austin. But business-wise, it's gotta be Dallas. And "heart" is a nice thing to have. So something with "heart" might work. What about personality? "Soul" has positive connotations: there are both spiritual and urban connotations.

So something like, "Texas-sized Heart and Soul: Think Dallas" might convey a more personable message, while differentiating Dallas from both its in-state and out-of-state competition.

Just a thought. But what do I know, I'm not Texan.

Fatherly Advice

I came across this piece of wisdom while tooling around some local blogs.

I bet it was a #2 with an eraser.

In a marketing context, you could take this point at least three ways.

- The first, obviously, is K.I.S.S. In other words, neither overthink or overkill.

- The second is that the tried and true may be what gets things done the most cost effectively.

- The third is in fully understanding the challenge so that you can provide a solution that is reliable, workable and affordable within your parameters.

Put your money where it matters most. In getting to your goal. Everything else is just window dressing. Or space pens.

A Belated Birthday

TSMR celebrated its first year on July 14. Actually, I didn't even notice so there was no celebration.

But, since milestones are traditionally a time for reflection, it's interesting to note that while traffic during the first six months was gruesomely awful, in the two months since our hiatus, weekly traffic has increased to a respectable enough point where we can begin to consider some ad/sponsor support and actually paying for a new design... we'll see.

So thanks for helping to keep this thing going.

Now, if there were only more blogs within our industry to link with...

M|C Communications Sold for MegaBucks

And isn't this really why most of us stay in this silly business...

Tradeshow Executive is quoting $400 million for the sale.

I've never met Jack Connors, but John Mooney has been a help to yours truly over the years. So TSMR is delighted for him.

And jealous.

FOSE Shows 26% Growth

Which means the government is still spending big despite the upcoming elections. A PostNewsweek TechMedia analyst said government IT spending is up 9% in 2004, to $60 billion.

Which also means FOSE is no danger of becoming the next Comdex.

There seems to be a decent bit of innovation being done on the show floor as well, according to the article:

FOSE has introduced several new pavilions and focus areas in the past few years, based on changes in the marketplace, including the DoD Pavilion, E- Town, which is focused on the latest state and local technologies for e- government, the SANS Pavilion, for Storage Area Networks, and the Homeland Security Pavilion.

More proof that focused traffic areas a great tactic to help deliver more exhibitors and attendees. Naturally, FOSE has a built-in advantage as each of these focus areas are experiencing growth, but on the other hand, FOSE also has competition in each of the verticals it represents. So its success in developing these areas is laudable, as is their commitment to continually reinvent what could otherwise be an extremely dull government purchasing field trip.

Lorenz is an old friend who was another Reed casuality, so I'm very happy for him.

Marketing Blog Out, Nick Usborne In

Couple changes to the blogroll. Looks like MarketingBlog has stopped publishing. Meantime, I didn't have any good copywriting sites so have added Nick Usborne to the MBON list to the right.

Nick has some interesting info to share on online copywriting and I feel he's also kin in a way, since he too made his mark in traditional direct marketing (albeit not with trade shows, but with real direct marketers). Worth the read if you're serious about employing online messaging that's meaningful to your customers and prospects.