September 2012

ammunition

To get conversations started at the 2012 Kitchen & Bath Industry Show, Teakworks4u offered booth visitors a nostalgic tchotchke - a rubber ducky - to thank them for stopping by. Passersby were drawn to the exhibit, which featured a miniature bath tub full of the colorful squeeze toys, and couldn't help asking how the rubber duckies factored into a booth featuring custom teak products. That quandary gave staffers the opportunity to let people pluck a duck from the tub while listening to a short elevator pitch, which ended with the revelation that attached to each duck was a slip of paper with varying discounts toward Teakworks4u's products. Attendees migrated to the booth for the simple yet charming promotion, proving that a rubber ducky really was the one to make show time lots of fun. Press rooms can be pretty depressing places lately. Gone are the days of lavish lunches and press kits containing valuable product samples. Today's writers and editors are lucky if they get a cup of lukewarm coffee and a show directory. So to sweeten the deal for writers and editors covering the 2011 Licensing International Expo, Cathy Heck Studio LLC offered them a snack alongside a stack of its press kits. The company simply wrapped boxes of Cracker Jacks with its own branded packaging, turning the iconic caramel-coated popcorn into a mouthwatering marketing tool. The branded packaging, printed with the message "Enjoy a show snack from the original Cathy Heck Studio," featured the company's artwork, contact information and URL, and the phrase "Eat inside the box, think outside the box!" The delectable lure undoubtedly left a good taste in journalists' mouths - not to mention a positive brand impression in the back of their minds. What do you get when you combine some office furniture, a banner stand, a draped table, and 400 feet of tinfoil? A 10-by-10-foot exhibit, of course. Crafted by Benedictine University for its exhibit at the 2011 Society for Human Resource Management show, the crinkly yet eye-catching construction was an explosion of foil. Aside from the draped table and banner stand, every inch of the space, including the floor, back wall, and office furniture - a desk, chair, lamp, and wastebasket - was covered in Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Foil. While the booth had little connection to Benedictine's offerings, it made countless attendees do a double take, generating way more traffic than the teeny space would have otherwise scored at the show. Now that's a wrap! Trade shows are certainly serious business. But at EuroShop 2011, Elea S.p.A. added a dash of humor. To draw attention to its grocery-checkout systems, Elea hired four actresses who played the role of grocery-checkout clerks, each dressed in the same uniform and blonde wig. Roughly every hour during the show, music started playing in the booth, prompting the women to take their marks at the exhibit's entrance, where they acted out a comical pantomime of seemingly unrelated yet choreographed actions. Their facial expressions and series of movements proved to be enough to make passersby stop and stare. At the end of their presentation, the women each took a seat at one of the checkout stations, where they appeared to "freeze" in motion. Without uttering a word, the quirky quartet added a bit of unforgettable whimsy.		Generally speaking, sand castles are better left on the beach. But for the 2012 World of Concrete show at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Marshalltown Co., a manufacturer of trowels and construction tools, turned a portion of its outdoor exhibit into a massive sandbox, and hired Kirk Rademaker from the Travel Channel's "Sand Masters" reality show to erect a roughly 4-foot-tall sculpture. Not only did the evolving work of sand art - which ultimately featured the Marshalltown logo, a giant trowel, and a worker laying bricks - attract attention; it also served as an excellent ice breaker. Staffers approached curious onlookers and explained that Rademaker was creating the sculpture using Marshalltown's own equipment. Hundreds of attendees snapped photos, including Marshalltown staffers, who uploaded various images of the project to the company's Facebook page, illustrating its progression from a sandy start to a photo-op finish. Branded T-shirts are a dime a dozen at trade shows. Clever branded T-shirts, however, are a hot commodity. That's what EMC Corp. discovered when the T-shirts it handed out at the 2011 RSA Conference disappeared faster than you can say "hacker." The gray Ts promoted the company's online file-backup service subsidiary, called Mozy Inc. The back of the shirt featured the Mozy URL and logo, while the text, "BACK THE F:\ UP!" was on the front in lime-green capital letters. The slightly sophomoric directive struck a chord with the conference's tech-minded attendees who clamored to the modest 10-by-10-foot exhibit to get their hands on the shirt with the flippant phrase. Every foot of convention-center concrete comes at a price, so you'd better make every inch of your exhibit effective. At GlobalShop 2011, Communication Design International Pte. Ltd., a Singapore-based project-management firm specializing in events, created a one-off exhibit element that took the place of a reception desk, literature stand, and hospitality bar. The base of the round, waist-high structure offered literature shelves and storage, and provided support for a C-shaped bar, which protruded out and up from the structure's base. The bar's position created enough room for two bar stools to be positioned underneath. Meanwhile, the top of the structure's round base featured a flat surface for taking notes as well as a deep pocket into which CDI inserted a vase filled with flowers. Contemporary and on brand, this multipurpose structure packed a punch in a 6-foot-diameter space.
		What's The Big Idea? Do you have a clever exhibit-related tip? Did your last exhibit have an über-cool traffic builder? Contact Kelli Billstein at kbillstein@exhibitormagazine.com.