Diversification is a many-splendored thing – until it throws a wrench into your exhibit-marketing program. Just ask All-Star Award winner Christine Sionne, CTSM, trade show manager and 30-year veteran at Hunter Industries International Inc. The company's rapid growth and ever-expanding product inventory led to a full-to-bursting booth – and a migraine for its exhibit manager.

Hunter launched in 1981 with a singular focus: a plastic, gear-driven rotary sprinkler that quickly became an industry staple. The company proceeded to crank out new wares, and by 2009 its gradual evolution became a full-on growth spurt. First came the acquisition of landscape-lighting firm FX Luminaires, which added hundreds of products to Hunter's arsenal. Next on the purchasing list was Hydrawise, a software provider for Wi-Fi-based irrigation controllers, and Hunter quickly integrated the technology into its residential and light-commercial products. Finally, given the expansion prospects in the lighting industry, the company introduced Hunter Outdoor Landscape Manufacturing, dba Holm, which offers architectural and landscape light fixtures.

While these developments enlarged Hunter's market reach, Sionne's trade show program lacked a similar level of augmentation. Due to budgetary constraints, she was saddled with an antiquated booth that in 2017 was going on 10 years old and exceeding maximum capacity. "Each of our product managers wanted the exhibit to highlight every single component a customer could ever use," Sionne says. "It was getting harder and harder to squeeze them all into the footprint in a manner that made sense for sales reps and attendees." And despite her repeated requests, a new booth never made it on Hunter's must-have list.

Rebrand to the Rescue
Sionne's saving grace arrived in the form of a full company rebrand. Following the acquisition process that started in 2009, internal stakeholders realized Hunter wasn't the same sweet little sprinkler firm that popped up 30 years ago. It had outgrown its brand, market, and tagline, and it needed a makeover. Along with a new logo and color scheme, management introduced a fresh marketing platform and tagline: Built on Innovation. To support the rebrand, stakeholders gave Sionne the go-ahead to commission a new booth that would launch at the end of the 2017 trade show calendar.

Not surprisingly, she didn't want to merely trade old components for new ones. In addition to accommodating various footprints at Hunter's large national events and small regional shows, the booth needed to emit a tech-forward feel. "We had all of these wonderful, high-tech products, but the old booth didn't reflect the nature of our offerings," Sionne says. "And it certainly didn't echo the Built on Innovation tagline."

Sionne also wanted to organize Hunter's wares in a manner attendees would quickly understand. That said, she also had to please product managers who expected every sensor, rotor, valve, nozzle, sprinkler, Wi-Fi module, and lighting element to be shown prominently and equally.

Furthermore, many industry professionals were existing customers or at least aware of Hunter and figured they already knew what the company offered and thus didn't need to stop by the booth. "That's why this new exhibit had to present a fresh look and, more importantly, an engaging way to demo our products to draw in more traffic and additional leads," Sionne says. In fact, she hoped the stand would increase leads by 50 percent.

There's an App for That
Sionne's search for the perfect solution started at EXHIBITORLIVE, an educational conference and trade show for exhibit and event marketers, where she launched a request-for-proposal process with a handful of firms. Sionne challenged RFP participants to not only meet Hunter's communication demands but also recommend a technology-driven, one-size-fits-all solution to her product-overload issues. When the proposals came in, she quickly focused on a dual-faceted option from Derse Inc.

The Milwaukee-based face-to-face marketing agency presented a design whose aesthetic was befitting of the brand and whose fabric components would lighten the load. Plus, reps suggested an appropriate remedy to support Hunter's tech-centric tagline, drive leads and engagement, and solve the product-display problem: an app. Derse reasoned that the pros at Perfect Prototype (an interactives agency and Derse's subcontractor), with help from Sionne and Hunter's digital experts, could devise an app that staff and attendees could easily navigate. By crafting a sort of product catalog and demo station mashup, the team could pare down the number of physical products on display and yet increase the amount of wares represented digitally.

Since the app would offer almost the entire product range in a digital format, every product-demo station could provide all the info attendees would ever need. In effect, it could multiply the number of demos while drastically reducing the products crammed into the booth. Sionne gave Derse the green light, and the new build and app were soon underway.

The resulting exhibit was a lightweight construction comprising aluminum extrusions and fabric walls and graphics. Accommodating spaces from 10-by-30 to 40-by-50 feet, the stand included 16-foot-tall freestanding fabric walls and an overhead canopy to provide various levels of branding.

Throughout the space, seven kiosks offered both physical product displays and iPad-hosted app content, with five of the kiosks housing pairs of 40-inch monitors that mirrored the iPad screens. An eighth structure featuring two 75-inch monitors sat aisle side to act as a main traffic draw, while a 70-inch monitor mounted to a wall deeper in the booth also mirrored app content. All freestanding structures, then, could be added to and subtracted from almost any footprint.

The monitors, as well as a screen positioned within a conference room, presented the same app content, allowing staff and attendees to explore info and/or view or host demos from practically anywhere. Designers mounted products, which were grouped to facilitate logical exploration, to shelves attached to the kiosks. Thus, attendees could physically interact with some of the newest and most popular components, but detailed info about Hunter's entire inventory was available within the app – and right in front of them.

Once Sionne trained staffers on the technology, they could easily navigate through its screens to display everything from product schematics and testimonials to promotional videos and computer-generated animations showing the products in use. "The app became a sort of songbook for staffers, guiding them through presentations and demos according to attendees' needs," Sionne says. What's more, the navigation was logical enough that attendees could self-direct their own explorations.

Trade Show Triumphs
Launched at the Irrigation Show in December 2017, the new stand and app strategy were a resounding success right from the start. "The total number of physical products displayed was drastically reduced compared to previous years," Sionne says. "But with the potential to host 17 demos at one time in the main part of the booth – and additional demos in the conference room – the exhibit provided more than four times the demo opportunities."

As a result, lead counts skyrocketed during 2018, the first full year Hunter employed the new stand. Hoping to score a 50-percent lead increase, Sionne saw leads jump by 88 percent compared to the previous 12 months. Not content to rest on their laurels, Sionne and Hunter's digital team took full ownership of the app during that first year and tweaked the content to better reflect the ways in which staff and attendees were navigating the experience. After the improvements, lead counts jumped another 22 percent on average.

Not surprisingly, both internal stakeholders and All-Star Awards judges were impressed by these results. "It's remarkable how effective this app and redesign were in solving the problem and producing measurable outcomes," one judge said. "Talk about a dramatic improvement."

Lead-conversion rates also rose steadily. During the first season with the new stand, Hunter converted 29 percent of leads to sales. As the booth entered its second year, that figure rose to 50 percent, a factor Sionne attributes to minor app improvements and staffers' increasing familiarity with the technology. What's more, the decreased weight of the exhibit components helped Sionne realize a 30-percent drop in shipping and drayage charges compared to the previous 24,000-pound booth.

However, one of the most important – and unexpected – benefits of Sionne's solution was that its use eventually extended off of the show floor. Today, Hunter's sales force employs the app for everything from field sales calls to distributor training sessions. And as Hunter continues to diversify, Sionne is shifting control of the app and its responsibilities to Hunter's product managers.

"At some point, due to the amount of content housed within the app, we'll need to make some decisions about which products should be displayed indefinitely, which should be rotated into and out of the app, and which should be dropped temporarily or permanently," Sionne says. "But product managers will have control of and responsibility for these decisions so their top priorities will be represented in the booth and in the field."

Perhaps one of the greatest measures of the app's success, though, is that the distributors charged with selling Hunter's products to contractors and designers have asked for their own copies of the platform. As such, Hunter is now working on an online version that will allow distributors and others to use the tool remotely.

"What started out as a solution to an exhibit-marketing problem became an invaluable tool for the whole company, allowing distributors to sell our products more effectively," Sionne says. "That's a huge win for exhibit marketing." Indeed, extending an exhibiting solution companywide can be a boon for face-to-face marketers everywhere, but it is also a well-deserved win for this All-Star. E