TSMI's Trade Show Marketing Report

Steve Miller Doesn't Float. Ice Cubes Do. Meet You at the Bar.

Steve Miller's latest "Rambling" is titled "The Death of Float".

Skip to the text below the line for the meat of what he's saying:

If events are to survive and thrive in the future, we must deliver value above and beyond the benefits we've lived off for so long. We must provide a unique and superior option for our target markets. And I believe our value will be directly proportional to the size of the personal problems we solve … personal corporate problems and personal individual problems.

While I tend to agree with Steve most of the time, what he's positing here is a pretty vague goal. He's promised to tell us how to achieve this with his next newsletter. I'm looking forward to that.

Meantime, I'm thinking, why do Ms. TSMR and I go to shows? Last one she went to for her employer was simply to enjoy a perq. Now, as she's starting her own business, she recently attended one for product information and to get to meet some of the folks from the bulletin board where she spends a lot of time.

I go to IAEM and SISO to stay networked, speak as a mod or panelist whenever possible, pick up on gossip, listen to what problems people are having and get people to read the blog and talk to me. If there were a better way to accomplish those things that our industry actually used, I might not go. But our industry just isn't all that big on using technology to communicate, so face-to-face is it.

I don't attend sessions at industry conferences to learn as much to hear what our leaders are saying and what our attendees are listening to (and buying). It allows me to adjust my tuning fork to that of the audience so when it is time for me to talk or suggest a solution, my words don't go over people's heads.

Which is not to say that I don't stumble across the occasional educational gem or speaker (i.e., Susan Sweeney, Matthew Cohn). But I do most of my "learning" via Google and Technorati.

Between my wife and I, there's a half dozen or more "personal" reasons for attending. Not all of which are technically "problems". So I'm unclear what it is that Steve is trying to get across.

Meet you at the bar.

In his Rambling, Steve talked about how we should stop promoting "face-to-face" as the primary reason to attend shows.

I say he's wrong. We just need to promote the value of face-to-face differently.

When the only media you use when talking to customers, opinion leaders, speakers and colleagues is phone (incl. video) or email, you lose something on a personal level. There's a pressure of being on the clock. Small talk disappears. Time is not wasted. Nuance takes a hike.

And maybe the same can be said for the "working hours" of a show or conference. It's all business. Dry as Norwegian flatbread.

It's what happens afterwards that matters. At a typical show, many deals are proposed and/or closed not on the exhibit floor, but in sponsored networking functions, restaurants and bars. The show floor is often the last place to do such business. Booth staff is in a sprint to qualify leads. There is an opportunity cost for spending too much time with one person while other potential prospects walk by. From an exhibitor's standpoint, not closing leads is often the point of the show. Sounds silly, but there's a logic to that.

Certainly there are exceptions and many exhibitors indeed have enclosed "closing rooms" or rented meeting rooms specifically for lengthier presentations and signing the contract. But for smaller exhibitors, the value of many potential sales may outweigh one actual sale. It's about how many people you can talk to in X number of exhibit hours.

For them, it's often the bar or the sponsored party that makes the show. That's where the networking action is. That's where you trade cards and say, "Great meeting you. I'll be sure to stop by your booth tomorrow, I'd love to see what you have."

And when you go home, the people you remember are more important than the products they represent. At least until you actually buy the product.

I believe many show organizers would do themselves a favor by spending less energy on gimmicks to keep everyone on the show floor and more on getting everyone to after hours networking functions.

You can't raise the bar without the bar.

SocialText Adds Value to Events

Social networking technology meets the trade show. SocialText allows anyone involved in your event to communicate before, during and after the event, helping to create additional value for all of your constituents.

Link courtesy of Ross Mayfield, who's behind the project and will be using it for the Web 2.0 Conference.

A lot of tech, medical and marketing shows and conferences could benefit immediately from using SocialText as most speakers and attendees of those events should readily grasp the value. The product offers a 30-day trial, so if you're not sure whether there's interest, you can find out without risk.

I think the best thing about SocialText is that it's designed by people who really care about this sort of thing and not by the usual suspects trying to make yet another buck from the tradeshow industry without taking the time to figure out how social networks really work.

Are You Asking for Cell Phones on Your Reg Forms?

Moore's Lore posted this about how Norway now has more cellphones than landlines. Norway has well-established landline infrastructure, thus is a good example of how cellphone use continues to eat into landline business. And that this is happening in the US.

While the point of the post was that cold callers, such as survey companies, can't call cellphones (yet), so all surveys are necessarily biased to landline users (read: old, poor); it does call into question why we continue to ask for landline phone numbers on registration forms.

I'd suggest that we continue to ask for landlines for the purposes of upselling and perhaps even post-show follow up. But maybe we should be asking for cellphones for purposes of emergency contact. And while we're at it, why not a little permission box asking which number they'd prefer us calling.

What If Seth Godin Had a Trade Show?

Robin Good has an interesting post about how the lines between advertising and editorial are blurring in the blog world. It's a long post, but I'm reading his main point as being something along these lines:

If we, as information sources, choose to ethically recommend products we like - and conversely stay away from those we do not endorse - wouldn't that create a more useful commerce model?

What does this have to do with trade shows?

Couple of thoughts. First is that whether we acknowledge this or not, we are content providers. People come to our events to learn, whether through seminars or through exposure to products on the exhibit floor.

How much should we care about quality control?
As content providers, we're responsible for what our attendees experience. It's in our best interests to prune lousy exhibitors and speakers, whether unethical, unprepared, or unfit for consumption. But we usually don't because money is money and we have sales goals and profit targets to achieve.

But what if we were more proactive in ensuring that only exhibitors who met our own personal criteria, i.e., "would I buy from this company" were allowed to exhibit. Would that make our shows better for all involved? Would it improve our brand image? Would it land us in court for anti-trust breaches? It's an interesting question to consider.

The eBay model enables this sort of "self-editing" for their users. Both sellers and buyers are rated according to whether they ship on time, pay on time, fulfill expectations and provide a quality shopping experience. Burn someone on eBay and you're a marked man (or woman) for as long as eBay stays in business.

Not so with trade shows. We don't really know who we're letting in to talk to our attendee customers. But, one bad apple is capable of creating a bad experience that could destroy your goodwill and brand image for an given attendee. Who might then tell other people about it. You could then become forever linked to a crappy company that you let in the door. Not pleasant and something we should think about.

We don't create shows. We create experiences. We enable conversations to happen. There are no exhibitors, no attendees. There are only individuals. Individuals who can say good things about us. Or rip us a new orifice. Individuals who can act like responsible, customer-focused merchants. Or burn bridges, leaving our shows to put out the flames.

What if we acted more like editors and bloggers?
Blogs are only the tip of the iceberg in social networking, but very powerful nonetheless. To Robin's point, when a blogger recommends a product to their community, or even when s/he chooses to post only news from certain companies, s/he becomes both editor and product endorser.

A number of bloggers are extremely influential people. Seth Godin. Tom Peters. Andrew Sullivan. Joi Ito. Some gained influence before they became bloggers. Some because of it.

What if one of these individuals was to create a show of their own, e.g. Godin's World? To exhibit, you had to meet Seth's standards. Wouldn't matter what the product was. Could be anything from DVRs to cars to ice cream. It just had to have Seth's personal stamp of approval in order to be considered. He's covered dozens, if not hundreds, of categories and brands in his books and blog, most of them non-tech products. In effect, this would simply be a lifestyle show. Just happens to be Seth Godin's lifestyle. "Want to live like Seth? Come to Godin's World." Hundreds, maybe thousands, would.

Not that he's thinking of it, but Godin could pull off something like this. He has that much influence. I'd be shocked if he proposed that idea and his chosen exhibit prospects didn't write a check the same day.

It's unlikely Seth Godin or anyone else who's got the required juice will ever launch a show branded off their good name, perhaps because they simply don't believe in the trade show medium as being a good investment or simply because they don't wish to be viewed as cashing in this way. But the model is legitimate and would work if they chose to pursue it.

We're moving in a direction where traditional advertising and marketing is dying. Not overnight - Boomers and GenX-ers who were raised to respond to traditional marketing will keep it afloat awhile longer. However, the generations that follow simply aren't buying what we want to sell them anymore. To them, recommendations from people (or web sites or blogs or bulletin boards) outweigh the selling power of any multi-million dollar campaign. Or six-figure trade show booth.

What are we doing to incorporate this type of thinking into our events and our industry?

Two Silly Ideas Might Make One Entertaining Show Attraction

Or maybe not. You decide.

I was watching ESPN at dawn and one of the highlights was a mascot race. Bunch of college kids in costume doing a 100-yard dash. Yawn.

Later in the day GreedyGirl posts a link to this article about starting a Halloween business of selling costumes that amount to human product placements.

Now let's put those two together. Most exhibitors have earned a well-deserved reputation for spending money on stupid things. And you can't stop them. So rather than discourage them from purchasing more useless tchotchkes, encourage them instead to drop a few bills on developing a product-related costume. Then get them to enter one of their booth staff in a race against other entrants from other exhibitors.

Have the race start the show instead of hiring a band or a doing ribbon cutting. It's different, amusing, entertaining and even mildly product-related.

Will this help any exhibitor with actual booth sales? Probably not, although you can bet winners will seek to publicize their victory, complete with photo. But it's something they might well enjoy and support. It might even be the highlight of the show for some of your small and new exhibitors. And while attendees may not care, they'll probably turn out to watch. It can become a tradition.

I know, you're thinking about liability insurance. Party pooper.

Short Takes: Alan Gets Contrite, Sue Goes Wiki, Hugh Takes on Saatchi

Some quickies from the TSMR circle of friends:

Alan Meckler found a show that's not one of his that he actually likes. "Conclusion: It all comes down to vertical focus and need," says Meckler.

Sue Pelletier has launched the meetings industry's first wiki. Anyone want to wiki with Sue? Great idea to encourage some new thinking. But better her than me for running it. I already have way too many non-paying projects on my plate. Like what you're now reading.

Hugh MacLeod turns Saatchi's "Love Marks" idea inside out. "You want the lady in the shopping mall to love your product? Easy. Love her first," says MacLeod.

Going With the Flow at IMTS

Always nice to get a conclusive story from an exhibitor on the power of trade shows.

Flow International recorded "record sales" at this year's IMTS.

Here's part of the story:

Flow exhibited its WMC2 with dual head Dynamic Waterjet for high volume, flexible production, a 4x8 Integrated Flying Bridge with Dynamic Waterjet, as well as a 5-Axis AF series for 3D cutting. But the real excitement was the visit by Orange County Choppers, stars of a popular reality television series on the Discovery Channel. Mikey, Keith, and Jason of OCC brought for display the famous I-Robot chopper, a bike inspired by the science-fiction movie I, Robot.

"The crowds were unbelievable, and being able to show an example of waterjet cut parts as part of the I-Robot bike went a long way in educating an enormous number of people about Flow and waterjet technology," added Light.

I hope to do a follow-up on this regarding any pre-show and on-site marketing that led to Flow's phenomenal success at ITMS. Soon as Flow's PR folks get back to me, I'll get back to you.

Magazine Publishers to Invest $40mil to Promote Their Medium. Will Trade Shows Respond?

The magazine industry wants its ad dollars back. And its willing to spend $40,000,000 on doing so over the next three years.

Recent industry reports indicate that magazines are faring better than TV and newspapers in attracting and keeping advertisers dollars. It appears one of the drivers of this new campaign will be to kick TV while it's down and divert dollars previously earmarked for broadcast over to print.

Is this a move of desperation or one of pre-emption? Our industry has discussed doing something like this for years. Maybe not to the tune of $40 million, but something to which everyone in the industry contributes. So far we have this (pdf).

The magazines are also selling reader engagement, which they can capitalize on both in print and on companion magazine web sites.

While it's difficult to do an apples-to-apples comparison as many advertisers that use consumer magazines, TV and radio wouldn't make good trade show prospects, it's interesting to note that trade shows aren't even measured as a marketing medium by MediaPost.

Maybe we do need to get on with the business of a trade show industry promotion campaign. And let's start with the folks who cover marketing media.

Who's got the collection plate?

The Best Laid Plans... Sorry Newsletter Subs!

UPDATE: Problem fixed. Image server is up. Refresh your newsletter and the photos will magically appear!

Well, I have egg on my face.

After finally getting around to launching a long-promised newsletter, it went out a few hours ago.

Personally, I thought it was a thing of beauty with a couple of photos that set the tone for the editorial.

Unfortunately, my image hosting service went down. My album with all the source material used for the newsletter is gone for the moment. And all subscribers got a bunch of those little red X's where the photos are supposed to be. Embarassing.

Being a long-time supporter of the value of ASPs, and rarely if ever having anything go wrong when using them, the timing of this could not have been worse. It's enough to sully one's reputation.

Sorry folks. Guess I'll have to figure out a way to serve the thing myself.

Exhibitors: Set Goals for Trade Shows or Stay Home

I don't know what I'm more surprised about, that trade shows were discussed at the DMA's B-to-B Marketing Conference or that DM News saw fit to cover the event marketing session.

In a session titled "Event ROI: How to Set Objectives and Demonstrate Results," Ruth B. Stevens, president of eMarketing Strategy, provided several poor reasons for exhibitors to invest in shows. Then she suggested the one good reason why they should:

"I believe that it's about 'our customers and prospects are there,'" she said after noting the second horrible reason. "That should be the reason. And just because our competitors [are there] -- how do we know that they're smarter marketers than we are?"

While there are many show organizers who sell solutions, there remains a large and scary number of those who continue to sell exhibit space on the basis of, "All of your competitors are there."

And that gives us all a black eye. To borrow from Sy Syms, legendary NYC haberdasher and retailer, "An educated consumer is our best customer."