In December 2020, the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX) was moving forward with a five-day in-person event in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The massive show traditionally attracts about 150,000 attendees from around the globe and more than 4,500 exhibitors, including tech giants such as Cisco and Ericsson. Red Hat Inc., the North Carolina-based provider of open-source enterprise software, was slated to return for its 10th year at the show, and marketers were keen to continue developing business opportunities in this growing market. There was just one disastrous hiccup: Pandemic travel restrictions meant the Red Hat's team of product experts couldn't attend GITEX in person.

Despite this monumental challenge, Red Hat couldn't afford to miss GITEX, in part because eight top competitors at the show (along with numerous others with crossover services) would no doubt capitalize on the company's absence. To make matters tougher, Red Hat knew that after an extended period of online-only events, attendees would expect exhibitors to offer up meaningful engagements with their software developers and coders.

Unfortunately, all signs indicated that Red Hat would either have to withdraw from GITEX or settle for an entirely virtual presence and miss the opportunity to directly connect with important software developers and information technology decision-makers (ITDMs). During the event-planning phase in June, the company asked The Freeman Co. LLC's Europe, Middle East & Africa division (Freeman EMEA), the global event agency it had partnered with for the two previous iterations of the show, to see if there was any possible solution to its desperate situation. Nothing was off the table. "We love a challenge," says Tasha Barnes, brand experience director at Freeman EMEA.

"We knew Red Hat couldn't attend in person, but we felt we could offer a solution to help them meet their business needs and make an impact in the region with an unmanned stand." Essentially, Freeman proposed building a physical booth that allowed in-person attendees to remotely access Red Hat's product specialists via video conferencing, while maintaining only a skeleton on-site support crew of regional company representatives. Red Hat leapt at the opportunity to maintain its ability to exhibit without actually sending its stuck-at-home team.

Code Red
The teams immediately got to work designing a memorable experience that would make Red Hat's return on investment worthwhile, the first step of which meant recalibrating its primary objectives. Originally, Red Hat planned to build lasting business connections with the regional audience. However, the lack of on-site experts meant that goal would likely take a hit. Instead, Freeman recommended focusing on strengthening brand awareness and demonstrating that Red Hat is an innovator when it comes to delivering unique solutions to seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

With everyone's expectations reset, Red Hat developed three key goals. First, the company wanted to increase awareness of its hybrid cloud solutions. Second, it wanted to showcase the impact of its portfolio across multiple verticals, with a particular focus on its financial and edge (i.e., enterprise data no longer confined to a data center) offerings. Finally, the company still wanted to connect in-person ITDMs with Red Hat's experts in the States.

The teams began fleshing out the experience, which they dubbed Always Open, a nod to Red Hat's core value of open-source technology and its open booth â?" with or without staff. "We knew that we could harness technology to put the power of the experience into attendees' hands and provide an experience that they could navigate on their own terms," says Trin Basra, executive creative director at Freeman EMEA. The key to a successful, COVID-safe booth experience lay in finding the right technology for the purpose. To that end, the teams focused on creating socially distanced activations that used touch-free and gesture-based sensors, designing private meeting rooms that virtually connected visitors with Red Hat product experts working on an eight-hour time difference, and fabricating directional signage to indicate a clear one-way navigation with controlled entrance and exit points. As the floor plan for an 18-by-36-foot exhibit took shape, Freeman coordinated with Dubai-based Klick Project Management Services LLC to fabricate the booth and Snap Live Theatrical Show Production LLC to handle the technology needs.

But it all would be for naught if the right attendees weren't motivated to wander into an exhibit with only a skeletal support crew. So while booth plans were coming together, Red Hat developed and launched a detailed pre-show communication strategy targeting key attendees and requesting they preschedule meetings with Red Hat's virtual experts. Marketing teams used email blasts and social-media posts to drum up excitement, tease the (mostly) empty exhibit, and inform attendees about how to make the most of the experience. With the booth in place and marketing done, Red Hat just had to wait and see if its absentee strategy paid dividends.

Working Remotely
GITEX opened its exhibit-hall doors, and attendees soon sought out Red Hat's Always Open exhibit. The stand was easy to spot, with wraparound headers featuring the company name and its red fedora logo suspended over each corner of the space. Along the front, a large video wall looped content introducing the company and highlighting the self-navigable nature of the design. Handrails around the perimeter of the exhibit blocked any entry along the sides of the stand, while large lighted arrows directed attendees toward one of two entry points in opposing corners. Those wanting a closer look entered through a swinging gate and scanned their badges, which allowed Red Hat to track the number of visitors and collect lead information. A monitor offered a brief video message welcoming guests and explaining how they could get the most from their visit, while arrows on the floor and walls reinforced the one-way flow of traffic designed to minimize COVID transmission, crossed paths, and congestion.

Along the perimeter of the stand, Red Hat staged four walled demo pods titled Edge Computing, Innovation Industries, Digital Transformation, and Hybrid Cloud. Sensors detected when a visitor entered a pod, an action that launched a two-to-four-minute interactive demonstration and triggered the structure's exterior walls to glow a soft red indicating it was occupied. After being prompted, visitors scanned their badges again, providing insights about user interests. Each activation featured a head-high monitor and several circular, gesture-based sensors with simple icons that allowed attendees to curate the experience by hovering their hands above the appropriate icon to select the corresponding on-screen option. Users explored the capabilities of specific products and dove into case studies showing successful Red Hat partnerships. When attendees exited the pods, the demos reset and the lights dimmed to let other visitors know the space was available.

The center of the booth housed one multi-person and two single-person private meeting rooms and included interactive stations informing those with prescheduled meetings to scan QR codes on their badges and show the meeting invite that popped up to one of two bilingual hosts who ensured they entered the correct room. Signage and the hosts instructed attendees without prescheduled meetings to visit a microsite and arrange a time to conference. The interior of each meeting space had a comfortable chair facing a large monitor with the assigned stateside product expert waiting to connect via a BlueJeans video-conferencing integration to Red Hat's meeting platform. For about 30 minutes, the remote specialist offered insights into ways Red Hat can address attendees' enterprise needs and answered even their most technical questions.

When visitors finished their meetings and had their fill of the demo pods, they followed the directional arrows to the nearer of two exits and went on their way. But just how effective was Red Hat's bold attempt at in-person exhibiting while its key team members were stuck at home?

Going the Distance
No one would be surprised if the results of an empty exhibit were mediocre at best, but that was far from the case. The resulting engagement outstripped Red Hat's wildest expectations â?" and by some measures outperformed previous in-person iterations. For instance, the company captured 722 leads, which was more than it garnered at the 2018 and 2019 shows combined. Plus, Red Hat staffers conducted 50 virtual meetings with key decision-makers, demonstrating their pre-show marketing efforts paid off.

Visitors averaged 24 minutes of dwell time, an astounding metric considering nothing beyond their own interests kept them engaged. And with 1,245 unique engagements totaling 53 hours of content interactions, the quartet of demo pods overperformed. "It was a brave move to plan and deliver an unmanned stand," Basra says. "It went against everything we thought we knew about events prior to the pandemic and required us to re-examine every element involved in the experience journey," Indeed, the Always Open booth demonstrated that there are creative solutions that can make less-than-ideal conditions a resounding success. And for that we give Red Hat a tip of our hat. E