February 2011

ammunition

When most exhibitors scale back their exhibit budgets, they do everything they can to draw attention away from their economizing. Trade Show Fabrications West (TSF) took a different approach. First-time exhibitors at EXHIBITOR2009, the Las Vegas-based exhibit house had planned to do a blowout booth with glass towers, 16-foot-tall structures, large LED screens, and more. But when the economy imploded, the company's plans did, too. So, to stand out from the crowd while demonstrating it was conscious of the hard times attendees were experiencing, TSF rented a baby grand piano and hired a professional pianist for its fewer-frills 20-by-40-foot booth space. Drawn from across the trade show floor by a 5-by-3-foot sign hung from the ceiling that read "Your exhibit for a song," and the sounds of tinkling ivories, curious attendees streamed in, requesting everything from show tunes to classic rock. Booth staffers approached the gathering attendees to make small talk about the songs and chat about how the company could fashion cost-conscious but equally creative exhibits for them. By entertaining attendees with an attraction that addressed the tough economy in a lighthearted way that was also light on TSF's wallet - the scaled-down (but song-filled) version of the booth cost about 25 percent as much as its original plans - the company drew in a substantial numbers of visitors and left the show on a definite high note. How do you appeal to an audience comprising hard-to-impress medical engineers? You stick it to them, which is exactly what New Britain, PA-based Mangar Medical Packaging did when it handed out syringe-shaped pens at the Medical Design & Manufacturing Minneapolis show. Branded with the Mangar logo and website, the clear plastic pens came wrapped in the company's easy-to-open packaging. MD&M attendees not only got to test out the medical packaging firsthand when they opened the one-off pens; they also walked away with an unusual gift that reminded them of Mangar every time they used it. Any company can say its product is tough. But Sanyo Electric Co. proved its claim at the International Consumer Electronics Show. The company sealed one of its SCP-7050 phones - which adheres to military 810F specifications for dust, shock, and vibration - inside a see-through tube along with sand and small stones. The tube, which was attached to a base made of faux stone, rotated end to end throughout the show. The demo put the phone through dozens of tumbles per minute, proving that the SCP-7050 truly is "a tough tool for tough jobs." Slick pop-up exhibitry, high-tech presentations, and stunning graphics certainly make for a sophisticated booth. But sometimes a bare-bones booth can be just as effective - and at a fraction of the cost. At the Fire-Rescue International show in Dallas, Grantmasters Inc., a Lewiston, NY, grant-writing service, created a 10-by-10-foot booth that was as simple as they come - and yet utterly effective in attracting burly firefighter types. The back wall of the 10-by-10 booth featured a fabric graphic pinned to the pipe and drape, which displayed an image of stacks of $100 bills, along with the company's phone number, its website, and the words "Grantmasters Inc., grant-writing services." The exhibitor also pinned a faux 3-by-8-foot $100 bill beneath the main graphic, and positioned a similarly sized fake $50 bill on booth's fabric side panel. Rather than renting carpet, the exhibitor littered the concrete with faux, oversized $100 and $20 bills, while a firefighter's jacket positioned over a tripod in the back corner of the booth featured the Grantmasters' name and a giant dollar sign in couldn't-miss neon orange. Even the sole staffer supported the bare-bones theme by wearing a bright-yellow shirt with the words "Grant Writer" emblazoned across the front. Perfectly in tune with this particular audience, the simple, stark exhibit not only communicated the company's offerings in a glance; it also brought in 86 leads - roughly twice the number the exhibitor anticipated - and cost only $325, including everything from the faux bills to the staffer's T-shirt.		You can only see so many chairs at the Hospitality Design Exposition & Conference before the entire show floor starts looking like a Room & Board catalog come to life. So to get a leg up on its competitors, Kohler Interiors Hospitality raised its line of Mark David dining chairs to new heights - literally. The furniture manufacturer set several of its chairs atop a 10-foot-tall exhibit wall. The chairs, which were positioned on platforms tilted at an angle for optimum viewing, did more than raise awareness about the company's Mark David line; they elevated attendees' perceptions of the company's design chops as well. Hewlett-Packard Development Co. LP goes a step further than most exhibitors' Green schemes by positioning recycling stations inside its exhibits. HP's booths are dotted with elegant receptacles (each with different compartments for paper, plastic, and trash), giving attendees an easy alternative to relegating their refuse to a landfill. It's hard to demonstrate audio equipment on a noisy trade show floor. That's why Focal.JMlab built a mostly enclosed geodesic dome inside its 10-by-20-foot booth at the National Association of Broadcasters Show. Inside the dome, the company placed three chairs for attendees to sit and demo its high-performance audio equipment. While the dome served as an aisle-side attention getter, it also offered enough of an enclosure to block out some of the ambient noise of the exhibit hall, creating a more favorable environment to showcase the company's offerings.
		What's The Big Idea? Do you have a clever exhibit-related tip? Did your last exhibit have an über-cool traffic builder? Contact Travis Stanton at tstanton@exhibitormagazine.com.