October 2010

ammunition

To communicate that its exhibit flooring is "Easy on your feet" and "Easy on your budget," TradeShowFloors.com adopted a New Orleans-inspired "The Big Easy" theme for its booth at a recent EXHIBITOR Show in Las Vegas. The floor of the small exhibit was covered with interlocking carpet tiles in unmistakable Mardi Gras shades of green, purple, yellow, and black. The back wall featured an image of a vibrant Mardi Gras mask. And the giveaways? You guessed it, Mardi Gras beads. It's not easy to make a big impact, but this simple, clever, inexpensive, and on-message theme certainly fit the bill. When your company makes outdoor furniture, it can be challenging to create a realistic trade show display that places your products in their natural habitat. So to bring the outdoors to the 2009 International Contemporary Furniture Fair, Sifas USA positioned some of its furniture in front of a dramatic backlit graphic of a cornflower-blue sky with a single pine branch poking in from one corner and an unobtrusive company logo on the other. The outdoorsy, backlit graphic created something of a soothing retreat on the trade show floor, while simultaneously providing a fitting context for the company's offerings. Face-to-face marketing is all about the conversation. That's why for the 2009 Marketing + Services Frankfurt show, exhibit- and event-design firm Holtmann Messe + Event GmbH designed its booth to be one part conversation starter and one part conversation area. Half of the 17-by-33-foot exhibit comprised a square black box. Staffers drew attendees into the space by asking how confident they were in their sensory perception. They then placed a sleeping mask on willing participants and challenged them to touch and identify various objects attached to the walls, e.g., a stuffed toy elephant, toy truck, or rubber chicken. Staffers then lifted attendees' masks and talked briefly about their guesses before inviting them into the other half of the booth. Featuring a striped wood-veneer floor, the wide-open area provided ample space to talk shop. When attendance at the 2009 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Annual Conference & Exposition threat- ened to plummet almost 25 percent from its 2008 figures, The RightThing Inc. decided to hold a drawing for a Smart car to drive traffic to its booth. The Findlay, OH-based recruitment-process outsourcing firm steered the mini motorcar head-on into its marketing mix - connecting the drawing to its brand with the tagline "Having the Right- Thing on Your Talent Acquisition Team? SMART!" Before the show, the company promoted the giveaway with e-mails and snail mail to customers, along with ads in the conference program, exhibit directory, and the SHRM show daily. On the first day of the show, the company handed out almost 12,000 box lunches in cardboard cartons adorned with information on the Smart-car drawing and another IQ-themed slogan, "Driving Intelligent RPO Solutions." Attendees could enter the drawing for the compact car by allowing staffers to swipe their badges. They left with collateral such as commuter cups, T-shirts, and bags, all sporting the "SMART!" slogan. By integrating the car giveaway into its marketing messages before and during the show, The RightThing drew more than 8,500 people to its booth - a whopping 74 percent of SHRM attendees. Now that's smart marketing.		Porosity is a bad thing when it comes to engineered woods (aka plywood, chipboard, etc.). So to prove that its woods don't leak, Huber Engineered Woods created a clever demo/display area at the 2009 International Builders' Show in Las Vegas. Before the show opened on the first day, Huber attached small squares of its own wood and similar-size squares from two of its competitors to the open ends of large beaker-like containers that held a red liquid. Just before the show opened, staffers flipped the beaker-like display upside down and let gravity do the rest. Within minutes, the liquid had already begun to flow through the competitors' wood samples, slowly spilling out, little by little, into a tray below. But the Huber wood held strong throughout the four-day show, proving that it doesn't allow leaks. Which wood would you choose? Chep Equipment Pooling Systems channeled the Blue Man Group for its exhibit-marketing strategy at the 2009 United Fresh Produce Association show. While the company makes wooden pallets and crates for shipping produce, the pallets are painted blue, the company's corporate hue. Since the color makes its pallets stand out from the blasé brown crowd, Chep decided to use the color as a thematic element in its efforts at United Fresh. At the show's opening-night reception, sponsored by Chep, a pair of blue men wearing blue suits and top hats posed for photos with attendees, who were invited to stop by the company's booth the following day to retrieve the photos. The dynamic blue duo also served as aisle-side crowd gatherers in Chep's exhibit during the show, handing out promotional literature and attracting attention from curious passersby. Why settle for blasé business cards when you can opt for something a little more functional? Josh Bach Ltd., a novelty-tie company, opted out of traditional business cards for the 2009 National Stationery Show and went with a business-card/notepad hybrid. The 2-by-3-inch booklet featured the company logo on one side, its tagline on the binding, and an illustration of how to tie a necktie on the back. When opened, the booklet revealed contact information on the inside flap, along with 20 pages of paper. When attendees used the last page, a Willy Wonka quote was revealed, reading: "A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest of men." 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.