Ill-Prepared Staffer Syndrome
Symptom: Staff who have inadequate training on your products dispense incorrect information to attendees.
Doctor's Orders: The code stresses that companies make sure all of their employed representatives have thorough groundings in laws and regulations, as well as industry guidelines that are relevant to their products. In addition, companies must confirm that reps possess enough knowledge of general science and product-specific material to deliver correct and current data to booth visitors. "Health-care professionals live in the world of accurate data and expect the same when they visit your booth," says Jean Howard, director of business development at TPG Trade Show and Event Marketing. "Knowing what information can and cannot be shared prevents serious violations and establishes critical credibility."

Gimmicky Giveaway Disorder
Symptom: Your pre- and at-show promotions lure booth visitors with the promise of branded tchotchkes.
Doctor's Orders: The code bans what it dubs "reminder items" – e.g., coffee mugs, notepads, pens – because such products may influence a physician's choice of medication. Exhibitors should therefore avoid distributing these items altogether. Instead, many exhibitors are turning to educational in-booth engagements as a way of attracting attendees, rather than the promise of a freebie. "Developing education-based activities – particularly those that are visually compelling – is more work than simply handing out branded swag," says Jon Ellms, vice president of Access TCA Inc. "But it's an opportunity for smart exhibitors to prove their experiential mettle, and many believe the trend away from these giveaways has raised the credibility and educational value of exhibits at medical congresses."

Indiscrete Promotion-itis
Symptom: Exhibitors' in-booth promotional activities are not physically separated from scientific/medical materials and discussions.
Doctor's Orders: While no section of the code explicitly forbids the physical merger of marketing activities and medical materials, its overall prohibition and regulation of commercial activities have moved exhibitors to be sure that their promos and scientific data (such as results from recent clinical trials) are displayed or conveyed in physically separate parts of their booths. Doing so lessens the chance that promotional claims and technical data might be mixed. "Be careful your booth is designed with a natural traffic flow that also manages to divide promotional and scientific information into their respective areas, such as by using a tall partition," Howard says.

Chronic Off-Label chin-wag
Symptom: In-booth discussions segue into conversations about uses for a product that the Federal Drug Administration has not approved.
Doctor's Orders: Every prescription drug marketed in the United States carries a written FDA-approved label listing its proper uses and doses. Off-label conversations – that is, exchanges in which staffers discuss uses not specified on a product's government-sanctioned packaging label or insert – are explicitly out of bounds. As such, staffers should confine their discussions about the product to only the permitted uses. "Never take the chance of having an off-label conversation with a booth visitor," Howard says. "You never know who you are really talking to because FDA representatives attend and are on the lookout for this violation."

Free-For-All Fever
Symptom: Clients and prospects are given gratis tickets to the theater, sporting events, or educational symposia.
Doctor's Orders: While offering tickets to a hot new play or an NBA game is a practice on a steep decline, the potential interpretations of "educational symposia" could be more numerous than episodes of "General Hospital." Thus, the code is adamant that giving out freebies for any of those venues would be inappropriate. That means those tickets to the Body Worlds exhibit might have been fun – and arguably educational – but they're still forbidden. "Instead, philanthropic efforts, contests testing knowledge, and just good information have become the new giveaways," says Steve Mapes, senior vice president, strategy, at Impact XM. "These appeal to attendees' hearts and minds."

Improper Largesse Affliction
Symptom: Expensive gifts are used to reward clients and woo prospects.
Doctor's Orders: The code declares that unless state law prohibits them from doing so, companies can offer health-care professionals education-related gifts such as textbooks, medical journals, and anatomical models as long as those presents do not possess "substantial value," which it defines as $100 or more. So while an exhibitor could give someone a digital edition of a medical text, it could not gift him or her a tablet PC on which to read it. "Federal and state legislation has transformed the show floor," Ellms says. "Wise exhibitors shifted their focus away from freebies to in-booth education, using digital tools with cinema-quality visuals to engage physicians and highlight clinical data." E