Check out this cool rear projection film, which can be laminated onto glass and cut into any shape. It works in shop windows and exhibit spaces. What else could we do with it?
Just returned from HCEA 09 in Tampa FLA, where marketers were engaged in a three-day discussion about the future of healthcare exhibiting.
Feeling the pinch of a distressed economy, increasingly restrictive PhRMA and AdvaMed Codes, and a confusing matrix of state laws, weary marketers (and their busy legal departments) are turning to their most important constituents for answers: the healthcare professionals that attend the conventions.
With new qualitative research in hand (and a promise to do more research in the coming year), the industry pondered its future with no promotional giveaways and fewer attendees finding their way into the exhibit hall. Some of the more interesting discussion threads...
...docs are overwhelmed with exhibit halls and suggest redesigning the experience around therapeutic areas, wishing the experience was more like shopping in a department store. Exhibitors and associations are struggling with the implications, including fractured brand strategies, higher costs and less real estate for the associations to sell. Exhibit size maximums could result...
...docs want interactive, hands-on experiences in booth and meaningful content delivered by the Key Opinion Leaders they trust. Not sales reps. Associations and exhibitors will need to work together to accomplish this, as many associations ban clinical experts from presenting on the exhibit hall floor...
...the internet will continue to put pressure on convention attendance as it becomes more challenging to provide relevant content for an increasingly wired attendee base. Interestingly, there was a real openness to embracing social media within integrated campaigns...
...early returns show the ban on promotional giveaways has had an impact on attendance. HOWEVER, while attendance is down, the quality of conversations and number of meaningful leads is up. Associations talked a lot about getting creative to provide other "giveaway-like" opportunities. Major exhibitors seem to be done fighting it, and have moved on to figuring out what's next.
My take on all of this is simple: a good crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Circumstances have provided a wonderful opportunity for the industry to get back to basics and refocus on live communications that provide real value to attendees. Listening to your customers is the perfect place to begin, and I'll bet a new, more successful model emerges by the time HCEA rolls into New Orleans next year.
I’m not so sure I agree with the pundits in terms of the juice and fanfare that exhibitors displayed at this year’s E3 conference. However, there is so much going on in the gaming industry now that you cannot help but be intrigued–major advances in story line, super fast processing capabilities, beautiful and diverse imagery and styles, massive multi-player capabilities, accessories, 3-D and on, and on. One thing I really appreciated was the incorporation of modified physical objects as controller into the game play–skateboards, guitars, mics, double fisted controllers, gloves, and thanks to Microsoft’s Natal our whole body. Makes ya wanna grab a Redbull, turn the lights down and connect…
In the eternal quest for greater ROI, tradeshow managers across industries have resorted to tracking booth throughput as a primary measure of program success, or failure. By taking attendance at the show (Bueller...Bueller...), they reason, one can gauge interest in the company's offering, and keep salespeople busy post-event with a heapin helpin of delicious leads.
Without going into the internal pressures and often unrealistic expectations that have pushed tradeshow managers into a corner and created this questionable response, the fact remains that there's a better way. And it all begins with a focused pre-event hand raiser campaign.
The idea behind a hand raiser campaign is to uncover a subset of attendees pre-event that are interested in talking with your company about its products. By finding these coveted attendees pre-event, you can focus your best resources at the event around these key individuals and drive qualified leads into your sales group.
There are a lot of ways to do this, but the method we've found most successful goes something like this:
1. Develop a strong list of key prospects, pre-event. These are your best potential customers, the whales you want to land. Start with your sales pipeline and last year's attendee list. If you're a major exhibitor, or sponsor, you may be able to get access to the current year attendee list.
2. Create a microsite. This is a small, event focused website that you'll drive your key prospects to. Once there, they can download information about your offering, and sign up (raise their hand) to meet with you. Make it provocative by offering a carrot (like a proprietary white paper) if they commit to a face-to-face meeting at the event.
3. Create a direct marketing campaign targeting this list of key prospects. Print and online together works best. Make it interesting and creative so it breaks through the clutter. The list should be relatively small, so you can spend more money for each target prospect. All communications should point your targets to the microsite where they can raise their hands.
4. Once the hands go up, make the experience personal. Have salespeople reach out to these prospects pre-show to introduce themselves and set up a good time to talk. At show, tailor the experience to the specified needs of the prospect. Remember, it's about them, not you.
With event attendance down, sales resources strapped and tradeshow spending under increased scrutiny from the corner office, now is the time to retool your program. Tradeshows work best when used to establish and further meaningful business relationships, which ultimately goes a long way towards creating a sense of community around your brand. With a strong hand raiser campaign, you can step off the throughput treadmill and take positive strides towards meaningful ROI.
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TREND HUNTER) It took 3,415 parts, 4,890 bolts and over 100 tonnes of steel to construct this welded sculpture, contracted by Land Rover for the Goodwood Festival of Speed last weekend in England. Five luxury Land Rover…
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Very cool way for Land Rover to get attention.
I'm not so sure I'm ready to give up my old mix tapes from Junior High, but
Transparent House has found a classy way to turn 140 of them into a functional piece of art. Each lamp is hand-made and casts interesting, and reportedly "pretty" shadows.
If you're a technolgoy, media or music brand, this could be an eco-friendly, retro-style approach to setting a tone in your exhibit booth or at your event. Or perhaps you're looking for a weekend project and a place to store your old Culture Club and Poison tapes.
This sounds so cool - I can't wait to go check it out! It sits along highway A44 between Amsterdam and The Hague - a giant, human-shaped building. It is the home of Corpus, a tactile interactive museum experience that takes visitors through the spaces inside their own bodies.
The tour begins on an escalator ride through a wound in the calf. Once inside visitors experience the body’s reaction to a wood splinter. After the 3D fertilization movie, guests follow a block of cheese as it makes its way down the digestive tract. Other exhibits feature the heart, lungs, mouth, and of course the brain. A beanbag game even allows visitors to try and take down bacteria before it can cause an infection.
At the museum you can experience hay fever from inside the nose, replete with a rollicking sneeze. You can don 3D glasses and watch as cartoon sperm fertilize an egg. You can bounce your way across a rubber tongue as you navigate taste buds and hear burps welling up in the deep. -TrendHunter. Pretty cool stuff!
I was in Vegas a couple weeks ago for NAB2008, a tradeshow event produced by the National Association of Broadcasters. As you can imagine, the show floor is jampacked with multimedia presentations and product demonstrations, from control room monitoring, live animation and surround sound demos to HD projection, video production work stations, and on and on and on.
No surprise then, that a static image would be a rare and refreshing find.
Autodesk, who certainly had daily a/v presentations and multiple demo stations, also embraced the idea of static appeal. They took the childhood viewmaster concept and incorporated it into what was rumored to be a 100% recyclable exhibit (right down to the glue).
You found yourself drawn to this plain, plywood wall to peek through each and every single "viewing window", which revealed seemingly unrelated photographic images (perhaps showcasing the cool, crisp quality of their video product, frame by frame?). Whatever the purpose, it was simple, sophisticated, interactive... and completely unexpected.