Tradeshow Predictions by Scott Tokar, Tradeshow Magician and CEO of Corporate-Fx, Inc.

WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW:

SUBSCRIBE TO MAGAZINE

Exhibiting &
Event Topics

EXHIBITOR
Magazine

Find It
Marketplace

EXHIBITOR
LIVE

EXHIBITOR
Education Week

Venues
& Destinations

EXHIBITOR
News

EXHIBITOR News
EXHIBITOR Magazine Announces Special Award Winners in its 2025 Centers of Excellence Awards

Sponsored Content
Aluvision: Modular & Sustainable Systems for Exhibits & Events

Associations/Press
IAEE Addresses Pending Shipping Strike’s Effect on Upcoming Events

Shows & Events
New York Comic Con 2024 Attracts Over 200,000 Attendees

People
Calzone & Anvil Case Co. Taps Retail Exec TJ Milian as Chief Marketing and Sales Officer

Company News
Impact XM Bolsters its Capabilities and Furthers Recent Expansion with Acquisition of Award-Winning Matrex Exhibits

Venues & Destinations
St. Louis Tourism Reaches New Heights: Record Growth in Visitors, Hotel Industry, and Meetings Sector

Shows & Events
Equip Exposition Continues Record-Breaking Streak as 28,500 Attend Innovative Trade Show

submit your news

email newsletter

Company News
Tradeshow Predictions by Scott Tokar, Tradeshow Magician and CEO of Corporate-Fx, Inc.

5/7/2020
"Unprecedented Times”, “challenging times”, and “unexpected”, are words you see in every commercial on TV today, these words express the change that society is going through right now, and some say that the meetings and convention industry’s future is unpredictable… But, as a tradeshow magician, it is my JOB to make “predictions”. I make my daily living looking into the future to perceive what word will be randomly selected in a book, or divine the outcome of a pair of dice before they are rolled… As I sit in quarantine in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, I feel a deep desire to use my “powers” to look deep into our future into tradeshows and postulate what will become of our industry in the the next few months and years… Oh yes, there will be change, and although magicians are never supposed to reveal their secrets, I am here to tell you that the real secret in post-Covid success is “foresight” and “adaptation”, if you can become the FIRST to adapt to changes you can make more money in the long-run… Maybe this is why people that look into the future are often called “proﬁts”(prophets)…

Here are MY predictions for our tradeshow future.

In-Line exhibiting makes a comeback, in a BIG way - Previously, the bigger the company, the larger the exhibit structure. However, 50’x50’ exhibits make it more diﬃcult to manage traﬃc ﬂow… In 2021, the in-line booths will make a comeback. Instead of the huge island exhibits, think of a larger, linear presence with a 10’x 100’ ROW of 10’x10’ connected exhibits or stations. This narrow and long approach isolates one or two staﬀers per smaller “booth space” to individually speak with the visitors one at a time. The trick here is to build-in partitions and distancing so that it looks like it is an elegant part of your responsible plan. The visitors can stand at the exhibit aisle allowing them to socially distance themselves to their comfort levels, ﬂoor graphics can also designate visitor and staﬀ “positions” to help guide the interactions.

Wider aisles between exhibits - create a safer, socially distanced feeling for attendees. If the tradeshow attendance is indeed lower in 2021, and the projected booth space sales are reduced from previous years, giving a tradeshow AISLE more room between exhibits won’t cost the show organizers more money. After-all, many convention centers, themselves, will be trying to help the show organizers in any way possible, and if there is no show there is no proﬁt for the organizer OR the facility… Wider aisle distancing will also make the show ﬂoor seem BIGGER in square footage even with fewer exhibits in the hall. However, the wider ﬂoor will also seem SLOWER due to the exhibitor’s perception of reduced foot traﬃc walking directly in front of their booth-space.

Open Exhibit Design will be de-rigueur, especially for the larger island exhibits. Giving people the feeling of distance is easy if they feel like they can easily reach an aisle from anyplace in an exhibit. Central exhibit “tower” designs and workstation partitions may be the new fashion, but designers need to take into account the psychological aspects and the feelings of claustrophobia that the visitor may feel if the exhibitor insists on a guided path or route through a booth structure. It is also extremely important that the booth design allows for an individual to have the comfort to come and go from a booth experience without feeling trapped.

Give-aways at the show will be obviously dominated by branded travel hand sanitizer bottles and masks, but the clever exhibitors will think beyond these overabundant branded premiums to oﬀer sanitary button-pushers/door opener gizmos, remote control covers like a shower cap for the remote control in your hotel rooms, and even battery powered UV sanitizing lights to kill germs while traveling. If your both can oﬀer some OTHER gift besides another Purel, you will get noticed. Think like a germaphobe for the best ideas!

Hands free demonstrations will allow the exhibitor to show physical products without the fear of indirect contamination and constant disinfecting. Or, perhaps exhibitors will need to provide gloves to each visitor so they CAN touch. An elegant solution would be to incorporate the demo into a professional presentation theater area so several people can watch the demo at once over an ampliﬁed PA system presented by a single individual. If the booth builder makes a railed-oﬀ circle or roped-oﬀ stanchions in the booth with designated “stand here” ﬂoor markings you can maximize visibility and maintain space for everyone. Another idea is to NOT show physical product at all. Metaphors allow you to TALK about your product without actually bringing it to the show. I should know. As a tradeshow magician, I do this all the time to get my message across, and sometimes a deck of cards can visually illustrate a computer storage system more eﬀectively than a physical hard drive, anyhow!

Local talent like booth hosts and hostesses not only reduce your expenses, but also limit the travel and exposure of your critical employees and sales team. Local event staﬃng professionals will be relied on not just for badge scanning, but also for initial customer interactions. Temporarily contracted booth staﬀers become front-line intermediaries between interested parties and your executives. Think about extra (paid) training for these temporary staﬀers to help them qualify visitors at your registration or welcome desk at the front of your booth.

Theater-style presentations will become the norm as they allow for a scripted show-and-tell from a “no touch” distance. Designated audience seats or stools are the automatic separation solution. Distancing can be modiﬁed on-the-ﬂy and at the show, based on the ever-changing local government guidelines. Many exhibit rental companies already oﬀer padded 17” square ottomans as seating options and these make excellent designated seats that can be distanced with ease. For a custom solution, we may see “expandable” ottomans so that these seats can be widened or connected-together by the visitors themselves to allow for two people to sit together in the same area (if they feel comfortable to do so). These seats can be sprayed and wiped-down between presentations by local, temporary event staﬀers to add the additional level of cleanliness, if required. The “stage” area itself can be a raised radial surface to give the presenter the ability to walk around, perform, use a projection screen, and display products to an entire group while maintaining a proper social distance for many individuals at once.

Professional presenters Professional live presenters, actors, and magicians have the proven stamina to repeat a live presentation with more frequency to smaller audiences throughout the day. Since larger crowds will be uncomfortable and potentially illegal, the frequency of these “smaller” presentations will need to be increased allowing the exhibitor to maintain visibility while still maximizing measurable badge scans and quantiﬁable leads. To increase frequency, many presentations will have to be shorter. Think about doing a ﬁve to six minute presentation, repeated every 20 minutes instead of a ten to twelve minute presentation every 30 minutes. Also, since fewer executives and employees of many exhibiting companies will be traveling to these shows, hiring a professional presenter increases the perceived size of the exhibitor’s organization at the show, while delegating the initial customer contact to a less critical staffer.

Badge scanning is mostly “hands free” even today, but popular NFC or near-ﬁeld chip scanning (over a distance of 4 cm or less) and in-close iPhone camera (QR code) scanning will be used much less than the more powerful laser barcode scanning devices that allow you to scan a badge “feet away” instead of “inches” away. It’s all about distance, here.

Hand sanitizer stations may be REQUIRED by local ordinances based on show density. Perhaps one dispenser for every 25 guests or every 25 feet of aisle. These will become branding opportunities for signage and sponsorships, but careful maintenance schedules must be arranged so that there are no disappointing “empty” experiences for the visitors. Think about adding an extra sanitation station to your booth registration desk as well.

Queuing is natural in some cultures… I once heard a story that a line formed in front of a nondescript building in a communist country. After an hour or so, one of the people in the line ﬁnally asked the person in front of them what they were queuing for and he had no idea but didn’t want to feel left out! Queuing at a safe distance will feel normal for all of us after we become accustomed to it at the supermarket, bank and at Starbucks. But the real question is, how can your exhibit BENEFIT from this queuing? As people gather and wait, can you use this time to sell to them? Add video monitors, banner stands and maybe even entertain them while they wait. Make the line an extension of your exhibit experience to get the most out of the situation. But remember to make the wait SEEM as short as possible, a more “distanced” line looks longer to the visitor and that may mean lower participation in your exhibit due to simple perception.

"Human salad bars”, sounds unappetizing doesn’t it? And the physical act of constructing Lexan plastic sneeze guard between you and your booth visitors is as equally unappetizing… Obviously every exhibitor needs to follow show guidelines and local regulations, but the reason people love tradeshows is because people crave real human interaction. Now, we may not be able to hug or shake hands for a while, and I may even stand a full six feet away from others, but adding a plastic barrier between us is simply counterintuitive. Over time these shields may become a regular and accepted sight in everyday retail and fast-food, but the sooner you can lower the barriers between people, the quicker you will lower the barriers to a sale.

Pre-show training will go WAY beyond traditional booth-staﬀ engagement strategies and open ended conversation starters and will now include health/safety training. Topics will include: handshake-free greeting styles, social distancing while still maintaining a connection to the prospect, mask etiquette, traﬃc ﬂow, personal hygiene in the booth, and how to exchange promotional material and business card information in a hands-free environment.

Cocktail receptions become a fond memory, like rotary dial telephones. Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone has replaced the rotary phone and I believe that the NEW cocktail reception will have as much innovation and evolution as telecommunications did. Once we all feel comfortable enough to lower our face masks to take a bite around other people we will see the gradual reinstatement of social mixing. Gone are the ﬁnger food buﬀets and self-serve peeland-eat shrimp bars… Say hello to pre-packaged plates and snack boxes and welcome back to SERVICE. Hygienic catering attendants in gloves, hairnets, and masks will now ﬁll a plate for you a la “SubWay” style to make it your way… Bar service will mostly be bottles and cans for a short while, but deep down we all want to mingle and nothing loosens conversation better than food and drink…

This won’t last… Take comfort in the thought that eventually things DO return to “normal”. Once the polio vaccine was invented kids once again began to socialize and swim in public pools together. Oh sure, things WILL change, just as ﬂying was forever changed by TSA after 9/11. But eventually, even though you still have to take oﬀ your shoes to go through security TODAY, history does demonstrate that we all returned to travel in larger numbers than in a pre-9/11 world.

Face to face gatherings and contact are a NEED for every human. Babies crave to be held and in fact will fail to thrive without touch. As children return to school, teachers are ﬁnding it near impossible to keep them from gathering together and socially interacting through play. And let’s face it, you and I would not be HERE today if two one-time strangers hadn’t gotten socially close enough to each other to embrace and bring YOU into existence… Business is about relationships, who you know, and connections. Tradeshows, meetings and conventions will be back again, and it will be sooner than you think.

Scott Tokar is the CEO and founder of “Corporate-Fx, Tradeshow Magic Group”. With over 30 years of on-site tradeshow presenting experience and hundreds of exhibiting companies/customers his unique brand of live communication is simply “magical”. www.CorporateFx.com

Scott Tokar, MIMC
Corporate-Fx, Tradeshow Magic Group
stokar@CorporateFx.com
1.800.MAGIC.13 (800-624-4213)
Twitter/Instagram @ScottTokar

Contact:
stokar@CorporateFx.com