Drawing Board
The recently rebranded exhibit house Access TCA Inc. partnered with Picture Mosaics LLC at EXHIBITORLIVE to produce personalized keepsakes for attendees while disseminating its new logo in the process. Using an iPad, staffers snapped headshots of booth visitors that were sent to a pair of Picture Mosaics' compact sketching robots, which produced one artistic line drawing on a 4-by-6-inch branded card and another on a 2-inch-square tile. Attendees got to pocket the larger print, while the square portrait was added to a large mosaic in the exhibit. Most smaller sketches were on a white finish, but a prepopulated set featured some tiles in blue and others with bold black lines that together formed the tagline "We Build" and Access's freshly minted logo. The design steadily appeared over the course of the three days the exhibit hall was open and kept showgoers checking back in to see the artwork's progress. True North
The National Automatic Merchandising Association Show (NAMA) is one where product sampling tends to take precedence over exhibit design – i.e., most booths are about handing out bites of packaged snacks and sips of coffee to the masses, not intriguing them with a clever concept. So while Kodiak Cakes LLC's richly detailed 10-by-10, produced by Rise Exhibits & Environments LLC, would have stood out in any exhibit hall, it was doubly head-turning at NAMA. The maker of hearty granola bars and stick-to-your-ribs breakfast items leaned into its Alaskan namesake with a back wall clad in weathered wood slats and roofed with corrugated metal topped with what looked like windswept piles of snow. A matching reception desk and adjacent antiqued barrel proclaimed the company's taglines, "Snack Adventurously" and "Nourishment for Today's Frontier," leaving little doubt in attendees' minds that this was not the destination for kale chips or kombucha. Rough and Tough
Red Sky Lighting LLC, which manufactures durable lighting for everything from oil rigs to trawlers, was concerned LightFair 2022 attendance wouldn't be strong enough to warrant shipping its 20-by-20-foot exhibit all the way from its warehouse in Wisconsin to Las Vegas. So instead it opted for an inexpensive DIY build that featured kiosks and countertops made from 3-by-3-foot pieces of plywood held together by PlayWood plastic connectors along with a branded 10-by-20-foot pop-up tent. The cobbled-together exhibit provided the perfect backdrop for Red Sky's equally rugged lighting solutions and cost little more than a trip to the lumber yard and a sharp blade for a circular saw. Better yet, the crowds did show up, and its blue-collar target audience appreciated the git-er-done approach. Sweet Spot
Hoping to position itself as more than a provider of printing solutions for retailers and other businesses, Gilson Graphics Inc. delighted RetailX attendees with The Sweet Shop, its sugar-themed booth laden with tongue-in-cheek references to the company's "suite" of services. In addition to sucrose-centric graphics and a sundae bar with toppings nodding to Gilson's "Create," "Produce," and "Deliver" service groupings, the exhibit tempted passersby with a Sticky Sweet Solutions gameboard. This wall-sized honeycomb graphic featured peel-off hexagons surrounded by giant but genial honeybees. After having their badges scanned, attendees removed the six-sided cell of their choice. If the area underneath contained a star, the attendee received a gift card. And even if the space was empty, participants still walked away with sated sweet tooths and a clear picture of Gilson's offerings. Knock 'em Dead
Lots of exhibitors like to claim that their new products slay the competition, but Little Giant Ladder Systems LLC took things to a whole new level at the National Hardware Show. To stoke interest in the debut of the King Kombo 3-in-1 All-Access Combination Ladder and plant the seed in attendees' minds that it is far superior to other offerings on the market, Little Giant staged a funeral for "Tad, the Traditional Stepladder." The aisle-side scene included a real-life coffin containing a run-of-the-mill ladder; a side table stocked with cleverly worded funeral programs; an "In Memoriam" placard noting that Tad was preceded in death by the phonograph, cassette tape, and typewriter; and a satirical video highlighting key moments of Tad's life. Seeing as NHS isn't exactly renowned for overly clever exhibiting tactics, the tongue-in-cheek attention-getter stopped scores of passersby dead in their tracks. Mallet Mayhem
Part of marketing is convincing would-be customers that they need your product in the first place. To draw attendees' attention to the many calamities that can befall them, Allstate Insurance Co. incorporated a whimsical Whac-a-Mole-style game into its exhibit at the International Consumer Electronics Show. The activation, titled Mayhem is Everywhere (after Allstate's well-known spokesman), challenged players to grab a mallet and smack five pegs, each labeled with a category of catastrophes such as Device Disasters, Stuff Stealers, and High-Tech Hacks. The kiosk served as an icebreaker that allowed staffers to easily segue from gameplay to talk of disaster avoidance. Angling for Attention
Island exhibits usually feature a fair amount of branding, most of which ends up on the exhibits' exterior walls and aisle-side elements, meaning it's parallel to the path that passersby will trod. But anyone who's ever driven past a billboard knows that if you really want to capture attention – and provide an optimal viewing angle – your message should meet passersby head on. Seloy Live Ltd. capitalized on that truism at Integrated Systems Europe by attaching glowing glass panels that jutted out from the sides of its stand, perpendicular to the aisle. Branded with the company's logo and tagline, the signage greeted approaching attendees and attracted them to the space while Seloy Live provided a fresh perspective on using graphics.