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Dropping the Ball
G-Form LLC wanted attendees at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show to know that storing their devices inside competitors' cases can result in serious, yet avoidable, damage. So to prove the superiority of the company's proprietary Reactive Technology Protection (RTP), the Providence, RI-based case and athletic-gear maker dropped an 8-pound bowling ball onto a generic neoprene laptop case from a height of 3 feet — then repeated the test a second time, dropping the ball onto one of G-Form's RTP cases.
But instead of expensive smartphones or tablet PCs, both cases contained M&M's candies. Not surprisingly, the bowling ball rendered those unfortunate candies unrecognizable during the neoprene test. But thankfully, the RTP case absorbed the brunt of the impact, leaving the M&M's unscathed. With this simple demo, G-Form effectively proved its product could smash the competition to smithereens.
On Thin Ice
What's the best way to demonstrate the realism of a faux-ice floor in a 10-by-10-foot booth space? Turn your entire exhibit into a miniature skating rink, of course. XtraIce, a Seville, Spain-based company that manufactures room-temperature, synthetic ice surfaces, did just that at the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Expo in Las Vegas. A graceful, whirling figure skater performed continuously throughout the trade show, demonstrating her talents and, at the same time, the functionality of the company's unconventional product. Occasionally, booth staffers invited interested — and brave — attendees to strap on a pair of ice skates and step out on the makeshift rink to give the imitation ice their own test drive, so to speak. A charming back-wall graphics panel depicting children skating made the miniature indoor ice rink seem as if it extended beyond the confines of the modest exhibit, while also providing a fitting context for the combination demo/display hybrid. 
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Comfort Food
How do you get throngs of attendees to visit your 20-by-20-foot
booth? If you're Steelhead Productions, you invite them over to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. With a setup similar to that of a salad bar, Steelhead's PB&J station at EXHIBITOR2013 featured containers of peanut butter and jelly along with loaves of bread. Following the familiar aroma of the favorite childhood treat, attendees made their way to the exhibit where staffers cheerfully invited them to step up to the bar and make their very own concoction. The sandwiches, however, weren't served with a side of hard sell, which not only put attendees at ease but also encouraged them to take their time, all the while soaking up Steelhead's cheerful approach to exhibiting. The soft-sell sandwich tactic netted 124 leads, far exceeding its goal of 50 leads, and a feel-good vibe that spread happiness all around.
High Visibility
At a show like Heli-Expo, where helicopters take center stage and small exhibitors have to fight for attention in the wings, you've got to find a way to stand out amid — or above — the masses. East/West Industries Inc. did exactly that at the 2012 show. To draw traffic to its 10-by-20-foot space, the company placed one of its Master Cranes, typically used in the aircraft industry, along the front corner of its booth. Then it suspended a bright blue banner bearing the East/West logo and "The Better Way" tagline from the crane arm, and extended the end of the arm approximately 24 feet above the floor. Using nothing but a fabric banner and its product, East/West elevated itself above the competition.
Paintball Product Pitch
Demonstrating a product can be challenging, but illustrating
its benefits over competitors' offerings is even more difficult. At the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show, iShieldz (a division of eShields LLC), delivered with a demo-centric booth. After watching a demo reel showing company reps shattering the screen of an iPad covered with multiple thicknesses of a competitor's protective film by shooting paintballs at it — abuse that devices protected by iShieldz film withstood — attendees were invited to test
the company's claims. At one station, attendees shot paint-balls at the screen, which bounced off without scuffing the
film. At another, they pressed a button to activate a machine
that seemed to scratch deep grooves into another iPad coated with iShieldz film. But when a staffer peeled off the film, the screen was undamaged. The field-test footage and hands-on demos proved the company's claims and decimated attendees' perceptions of competing films.
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Xirrus-ly Effective
Sometimes, more is more. That was the case for Xirrus Inc. at Interop Las Vegas 2012. To prove to attendees that one of its Wireless Arrays — a device used to help create wide-area wireless networks for businesses — can provide eight times the capacity of traditional networking components, the company set up an ingenious display showing just how much more its Arrays can offer.
Positioned in a couldn't-miss location along an aisle, the display comprised 100 iPads mounted on a wall towering roughly 12 feet over the exhibit-hall floor. Text atop the display read: "100 iPads on 1 Wireless Array." With each iPad running different video content, the wall o' iPads caught attendees' attention and communicated the Array's capabilities in a single glance.
Dust in the Wind
Trio Engineered Products Inc. wanted attendees at the 2012 World of Concrete show to understand the benefits of its WI3030 Concrete Recycling Plant. So it created a roughly 3-foot-tall, branded display that housed several bulky concrete blocks alongside a comparably small, glass bowl containing the dusty remains of an equal amount of blocks that had gone through Trio's recycling process.
A flatscreen monitor protruding from the top of the display featured a looping video reel illustrating the recycling process from start to finish. The easy-to-interpret display quickly communicated how much smaller and easy to handle concrete becomes once it has been ground using the WI3030, while the video offered more in-depth information for interested prospects.
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