TSMI's Trade Show Marketing Report

Postering the Neighborhood

I've never seen this advertising tactic used by trade shows, but it's one used by several consumer shows in our neck of the woods:  Posters in windows of local businesses.

For some strange reason, local businesses don't often care about how their window real estate is used.  In Mt. Lebanon, PA, where our coffeehouse is, you'll find posters for for-profit theatre performances, circuses, and other downtown attractions, in addition to the expected charity and fundraising events.

Needless to say, nobody from Mt. Lebanon goes downtown to the theatres to advertise events taking place in our suburb.  Nor do the store owners who offer space for these posters get a discount on tickets or a mention in the programs.  Nope, they do it for nothing.

That's correct -- your for-profit events can be advertised by local businesses near your venue at no cost to you. 

Just go into the store with your poster and ask to hang it up in the window.  More than half the time the manager will say OK, often without even considering the content.

I can't explain why this is.  As a part-time retailer myself, I don't give up window real estate for free for no reason.  It had better be a cause we believe in, or something that's important to a good customer or one of our baristi.  But to give away free ads without asking for anything in return?  That's pretty dumb.

But hey, as long as people are dumb enough to let you advertise for free in their stores, why not?

Have a Happy Christmas, Chanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's and CES.

Corante's Dana Blankenhorn notes how his holiday season experience isn't quite complete without getting innundated with press advances about January's CES extravanganza.

Bonus - while Dana takes issue with claims from a new CES exhibitor, the exhibitor responds directly on Dana's comments. 'Tis a great example to show how blogs are used to both opine and respond/clarify.  The company, NetBlender, offers Dana a challenge... will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Librarian Association Climbs to Top of 2005 Stupid Award Nominee List

OK, we don't actually have a "Stupid Awards" over here.  It would involve too much research.

But from all we've read and seen in our industry this year, if we did have a Stupid Award for 2005, we could crown the winner right now.

Come and get your award, American Library Association.

The subject of speaker compensation has been getting a bit of heat lately.  While we didn't post on it here, we did discuss it in comments sections of other blogs.  But it seems to me that Jenny's experience with the ALA is the most egregious we've seen - especially when you consider the ALA's own response.

What are they thinking?

Another Christmas, Another Card from Slack Barshinger

Only this time I half expected it.

For those of you who were around this time last year, I chided Gary Slack over at Slack Barshinger for including me on his company's Christmas card list because it seemed to me a very expensive card and I'd never worked with, nor had any reason to be a prospect (or so I thought - see Gary's comment) to be a prospect.  Thus I surmised it was poor list work and an unnecessary cost.

Yesterday I received this year's Slack Barshinger card.  With a personal note from Gary (see left).

As Gary mentioned in his reply to me last year, SB's holiday cards have become a tradition for the agency.  And the 6,000 or so on the mailing list do get a treat.  This year's card featured the theme "Holiday Cards that Never Were" (pdf). 

In the booklet were illustrations of eight "cards" that didn't get greenlighted for various reasons - a teddy bear on fire, a card in Klingon, a couple of gloom and doom political takes, an Easter bunny and my favorite,  a PC-take on the famous Mc-Graw Hill business media ad that was rejected for reasons of being "too sentimental".

[Tangential sidenote:  On SB's site, you can also have a look at other "rejects", including a take on last year's card (click "bean").  Our favorite among the other rejects - "Parade".  If you're city's leading department store is now known as Macy*s, you'll understand (here in Pittsburgh the venerable Kaufman's was gobbled up).  And the "Donner Party" is appropriately sick enough to have been a Gary Larson cartoon.]

I'm sure the folks at SB have a great time conjuring up and executing each year's holiday card theme.  And I suppose that with 6,000 on the list, it's a legitimate marketing expense, not a frivolous exercise in bloated overhead (geez, can you tell I've never been a big fan of agencies - ad or PR or creative?)

Anyway, while I don't recall our previous encounter as Gary does, it appears I will be seeing him for sure this June at the ECEF forum in DC.  I'm looking forward to it.  I'd hate to get kicked off the list.

Product Placement in the Hospitality Industry - Are Trade Shows Next?

I suppose this trend began a couple of years ago when Westin started selling its "Heavenly Bed" mattresses.  Today I received an email from Kimpton about shopping on their "Kimpton Style" site.

I have to admit, the stuff they're selling there is tres cool (although not inexpensive). 

As they're selling all this stuff online, one might imagine a point in time when upon walking into your hotel room, you find yourself essentially entering a department store.  Everything you see can be bought.  The bed, the towels, the lamps, the mirrors.  Maybe every item in your room will have a price tag.  Maybe the bartender will try to upsell you on buying some glassware and the waiter will ask if you want the tablecloth.

This also begs the inevitable question - what about trade shows as online merchants? 

The Connected Economy, Small Business and Selling More Conference Seats

Nick Usborne posts about understanding the dynamics of group behavior in a connected world - and how one conference organizer took the time to understand these dynamics to increase registrations.

"A conference company dramatically increased the number of attendees at its conferences, and its profits, by offering a discount on the purchase of two tickets instead of one.

Again, the marketers and writers looked carefully at their audience and their service, and realized there was potential to sell to more than one person at a time."

Nick goes on to provide a theory, but no additional detail on this particular case.  However, it does make sense.  People do form relationships within their online forums.  One example close to my heart - as a coffeeshop owner, I might get involved with several other owners on CoffeeGeek for bidding for a lot of premium beans I couldn't afford on my own.  On a more local level, I may work with pizza shop across the street to create large enough orders from distributors that qualify for free delivery.  These arrangements happen all the time.

I might also be more inclined to attend a $1000 conference if I got $200 off when I recommended someone else from one of my online or local communities attend (who would also get $200 off).  Two of us for $1600 instead of one of us for $1000.  Could you live with that? 

Just about every group discount offer I see is for a minimum of four or five people from the same company (which must also arrive by fax at the same time).  That's not usually any help for smaller businesses.  Why not offer a discount for just two people?  Instead of just "send this to a friend" links, try "send this to a friend and both of you save $200" (or whatever amount).

Nick suggests looking at Topica for communities of interest in your niche.  I'd add that a cursory Google search for "(your niche) forum" will probably turn up at least one online discussion group.  And of course, there's LinkedIn, Plaxo and the like.

Point is, peer and working relationships are no longer confined to within the office.  They can be anywhere. 

Another obvious (but usually overlooked) point - offering a decent discount for getting that second person is almost like saying you're paying for both attendees' hotel rooms or travel.  Whatever savings you offer is like found money for buying a flight or staying at the HQ property.  So when you make this offer, why not suggest a travel package or facilitate their ability to create their own.

My Space Isn't

I was looking to do a local ad buy on MySpace.  Figuring the demographic I was looking for is pretty much dead on with MySpace denizens, I thought it would be a no-brainer to lock in on certain zips/geos.

Unfortunately, it seems they can't target locally.  The smallest ad budget they'd consider is $2500 per month.

No can do.

As I was told by the salesperson, "due to its massive size and demographic any campaign under $2500 a month would not be cost effective." 

This seems odd to me.  MySpace was essentially started for indie musicians before it expanded to encompass a broader range of interests.  Given that start, I would've expected pricing to have been affordable to music stores, music schools and perhaps most importantly, music venues, trying to reach prospects in specific geos.

With Gen-Y already the most brand-conscious of any generation, this sort of completes the circle, since only major brands can afford to advertise to them on MySpace.  Tis a pity.

How Four Exhibitors Worked Together to Create a Blowout Event

Interesting story on an after-hours party at the Southeast Building Conference where four exhibitors got together as co-hosts.

While the story implies that none of the four were particularly thrilled with their results from having only a booth at the show, when they each invested $10K for a $40K party, lead acquisition went through the roof and business followed.

Now they're looking for sponsorship dollars to make it even bigger.  Which would sort of put them in competition for available sponsor dollars.  But in our view, that seems perfectly logical.

Something to think about, both for exhibitors and organizers.

Women's Show Organizers - Legal Alert

I'm no lawyer, but seems to me if this political group wins its case, that would be a very bad precedent for show organizers.

Aurora Productions vs. Alaska Right-to-Life.

Hopefully the idea that an organizer has to let in anyone as an exhibitor because they're renting a public building will find no legal standing.  If it does, we could be looking at chaos, starting with every women's show currently running, followed by any other show that might be politicized - and that's a who lot of you out there.

"Some People Had to Be Turned Away"...

I wasn't there - I only marketed the thing.  But according to the San Diego Union Tribune, we were a bit too successful marketing the Resort Development in Mexico Conference.

Brian had told me on-site registration went through the roof.  But he never mentioned that they were turning people away.  That would suck.  Considering this was more or less a corporate event, that's not what you want to have happen.

As I mentioned earlier, we had a difficult time figuring this market out - and why we think they were so late to get on board.  Going into the final week, we were disappointed (although not depressed) about only having around 150 registrants at the time of our last email blast three days out.  This was for a $549 conference. 

Final count execeeded 260, which meant a lot of last minute revisions for breaks, receptions and dinner planning.

Next year we may have to demand registration in advance so we can plan on-site events accordingly.