Smokey the Bears

As an exhibit designer, there are few things more satisfying than loading a client's brand new exhibit into a truck and sending it off to its first show. And there are few things more horrifying than seeing it burned to smithereens on local TV stations.

A few years ago, I worked with a large pharmaceutical company on a complete redesign of its 1,600-square-foot booth. Since my employer is a design firm, we arranged construction with one of our build contractors, and then supervised as our masterpiece was loaded onto the client's new 40-foot truck for the trip from London to Madrid. Everything we needed for the display was packed inside, including cases filled with hundreds of cute, 10-inch-tall purple teddy bears.

The bears were mascots for our client's pharmaceutical products intended for children, and they were a perfect, huggable giveaway for the show to which the truck was headed.

Two days later, I was driving to the airport in London where I would fly to Madrid in time to meet the truck when it arrived at the convention center. Once there, we would have two additional days to assemble the booth before the show. But in the car on the way to the airport I received a phone call that made my hands go numb on the steering wheel. It was the build contractor talking some kind of crazy about a spark from the brakes causing a fire in the truck on the hills just outside of Madrid. The truck burned down, he said, and so did everything in it. Well, almost everything. In the melee of fighting the fire, the road had become scattered with hundreds of blackened, smoldering teddy bears.

I had a show that was two days away, and a booth that was nothing more than a pile of ashes. Fortunately, I knew my client's old exhibit was still in storage at the previous contractor's facility in London. So with a quick detour to its warehouse, I enlisted the help of the gracious staff, who loaded the display onto the truck and agreed to supply a crew to help put it together in Madrid. Within hours, the truck was on its way, racing against the clock to reach the show in time for setup.

Back on my route to the airport, I called the printers and ordered replacement graphics and tracked down rental equipment to replace our computers and monitors.

At the convention center in Madrid, crews from both build contractors waited with me for the truck, which pulled up in the evening of the last setup day. The team of people who normally compete with each other worked through the night side by side. To boost morale, we bought a kettle and a camp stove, and set up a little temporary kitchen. All night long we cooked sausages and bacon, serving the crew sandwiches, coffee, and tea. When morning came, the space was filled with a complete exhibit.

Quick action, a cooperative spirit, and a cook stove had been the secrets to our success, and in the end the only thing doomed were the teddy bears, which made their impact on the 6 o'clock news instead of the show floor.

- Tamsin Higgins, designer, Tom Higgins, Stansted, Essex, United Kingdom