ILLO: MARK FISHER
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"Interactive media" is a blanket phrase that encompasses everything from custom interactive software development to digital-media production. In trade show exhibits, interactive multimedia is used for a variety of reasons, the most common of which are to draw visitors into the booth, to provide engaging brand experiences, and to educate attendees about products and services.

Admittedly, developing interactive media for exhibits can be a complex proposition. However, adding this tool to your exhibit is almost a prerequisite to success, particularly for some trade shows and audiences. For in a world where news, shopping, training, and even reading are increasingly done via computers and mobile devices, many attendees have come to expect interactive digital media as a primary means of communication.

If you decide to embrace this new and evolving interactive device, it can offer multiple benefits to your exhibit program, aside from just delivering content via a medium attendees can appreciate. It can be flexible, letting you quickly, easily, and inexpensively customize content for each show and visitor, as opposed to redesigning and reproducing three-dimensional exhibit components and graphics, which is a time-consuming and expensive alternative. And often, it's a weightless, highly effective tactic, requiring only the apparatus to house the technology - a fact that might decrease weight-based costs.

Also, interactive media is typically scalable, adapting to fill large display screens or small tablet devices, and it can even be used off the show floor at ancillary events or sales calls. Plus, the addition of animation and video elements makes it more eye-catching than static booth graphics, and implementing new technologies can help present your brand as cutting edge.

If you need to convince your company's number crunchers that interactive media is a smart spend, remember that this medium can be used to generate detailed metrics, such as on how visitors are using media within your exhibits. Applications can record each mouse click, tracking what content visitors choose to view and the length of time visitors spend with it. When integrated with lead-retrieval systems, interactives can also provide in-depth information about individual attendee's interactions - data that salespeople can later use to hone their pitches - as well as broader demographic information giving you an overview of attendees' specific interests.

Clearly, interactive media has a place within most exhibits. But given its seemingly unlimited scope, it's helpful to look at different types of interactive media commonly used in exhibits to see how you might best implement it in your program.

 Informational Kiosks - Kiosks give attendees access to a wide variety of information, from interactive product catalogs to technical specifications. These devices can use rich media (audio, video, and animation) to provide an immersive experience, and the interactivity puts the attendee in charge of how and what he or she chooses to view. While the term "kiosk" traditionally refers to a freestanding touchscreen display, people often expand this concept to include everything from handheld tablets to large-scale multitouch walls.

 Quizzes and Games - Staged on everything from touchscreens to huge screens for large-scale, high-visibility
game shows, interactive quizzes provide an engaging, entertaining way to educate attendees about your products. Interactive quizzes can also spark conversations between visitors and staffers about your product and brand content. You can also use existing game systems - from simple puzzle games to more physical, traffic-building activities similar to Nintendo Wii or Microsoft Kinect video games - to build fun activities around key branding and messaging.

 Presentations and Shows - In-booth digital-media presentations can go far beyond conventional PowerPoint slides, incorporating audio, video, and sleek animation to reinforce branding and create engaging communication. Exhibitors can use custom interactive presentations, such as live audience polling using tablets or an audience-response system, and can equip presenters with high-tech tools such as multitouch displays to further enhance their persuasive power. Technology-based presentations have become attractions in their own right, incorporating 3-D and 4-D theater effects or even immersive multiscreen theaters to create memorable, one-of-a-kind in-booth events.

 Brand Experiences - A fourth category, brand experiences, encompasses less informational in-booth activities, those that set the mood or create energy. These might include stylish brand animations that respond to visitor motion, or eye-catching demonstrations of new technology like projection mapping or augmented reality. More playful activities, such as virtual postcard photo stations, bring levity to an exhibit, while participatory activities, such as adding photos or comments to a video wall, will help build brand affinity with attendees.

If you're thinking about adding one of these interactive activities to your booth, there are three key considerations before you actually make an investment, namely context, medium, and attention spans/distractions. Everything from the size of your media displays, to where they are located within the exhibit, to how the staff works with the interactives can affect how much brand presence and booth traffic the multimedia generates. So carefully assess where it will be housed and how it will impact the existing booth and its planned activities.

Also ensure the medium attendees will use to interface with the content is easy to use; after all, attendees do not have time to learn how to use new navigations and interfaces in the middle of your exhibit at a trade show. So ensure that your media and its delivery are easily understood by your specific attendees.

In addition, communication should accommodate the attention span of and distractions faced by attendees, emphasizing top-level messaging while encouraging attendees to learn more by speaking with booth staffers or exploring further on their own. If your interactive blasts attendees with a ton of details, they're likely going to be repelled just as fast as if it were a cluttered graphics panel.

Whenever you're ready to take the plunge into interactive media, the industry has myriad specialists that can assess your exhibit program and tailor solutions appropriate to your needs. These firms will work with your marketing team, ad agency, exhibit house, and audiovisual vendor to ensure that the process is seamless, from concept development to deployment. Likewise, their experience can help you implement best practices to make sure your media is user friendly and communicates clearly.

New technologies come and go, but the role of interactive media in exhibits continues to grow and become a necessary tool for many exhibitors. With a little research and the right team in place, multimedia can make your exhibit more effective for both you and your attendees.

- Patrick Snee, creative director and principal, Blue Telescope, New York