Expo Interview:
Global Experience Specialists |
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Three months ago in Shanghai, EXHIBITOR caught up with Errol Ahearn, executive creative director at Global Experience Specialists, for some delectable Peking Duck and a visit to Vue Bar, which overlooks the Huangpu River and offers the most striking views of the city’s nighttime skyline. Now that Expo 2010 is over, we decided to check back in with Ahearn to see what stood out at Expo 2010, what exhibitors can learn from the pavilions on display there, and what trends he expects will make an impact on our industry.
EXHIBITOR: What was your favorite pavilion? What stood out about it?
Errol Ahearn: It’s really difficult to choose. There were so many outstanding things about so many of the pavilions, but in boiling it down, my number-one choice is the Australian Pavilion. Ten weeks after my visit, it still lingers in my mind. It touched me as a memorable experience and became my favorite pavilion of Expo 2010.
EX: You used the word “experience" in describing your favorite. Was that the key difference between Australia and the other equally outlandish pavilions like the Saudi Arabia Pavilion?
EA: Yes. I was there as an ambassador for GES to document this extraordinary event for our global design teams and to share my experiences daily via GES’ Facebook and Twitter pages. Yet what I found at times was that to really understand the Expo, I had to experience it viscerally as an attendee and not as a reporter. When I got into the Australian Pavilion, after standing in that huge line, it really intrigued me. There's the long, tube-like entrance that circles around the pavilion and takes you through the exhibit for almost five hundred feet, with each section — from the indigenous art of ancient Australia to the country's rowdy modern political history — suggesting it was an elegant part of a larger, ongoing story. It was broken down in such a way that every part I experienced in the moment was cool by itself and yet I had a mounting sense of something really amazing coming my way — and it did.
What really nailed it was the experience — the pay-off — of the theater presentation. At the end of your trek through the pavilion, you enter an auditorium and sit through a marvelous and very kinetic multi-screen presentation. The giant LED screens onstage rotate, raise and lower to create amazing reveals as they tell the story of Australia’s unique past and aspirations for its future. The audience of five or six hundred was going absolutely wild with each surprising reveal.
A lot of the pavilion's success was in the storytelling, the build up and anticipation with imaginative set pieces that ended in a unifying moment that felt like the climax of a great book where all the loose ends are tied up. In many ways it was similar to the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp./General Motors Pavilion on the corporate side of the expo, when a 4-D movie ends, you think it's time to head to the exit when — boom! — all of sudden the screens collapse into the stage and there's an amazing product reveal of the companies' eco-friendly concept cars. People were just crazy-excited when they saw this.
EX: Do you think the same things that made the Australia Pavilion stand out are the same things that can make a trade show exhibitor stand out? Is there a common link between the two?
EA: The success of the Australia Pavilion came because it told a story and it had a unique mechanism for relaying that story. That's the lesson: Any successful exhibitor that can overcome the same-old way it's always exhibited and find a new way to tell its story will get its audience to learn and ultimately retain messages better.
EX: What do you think exhibit and event professionals can learn from Expo? Which pavilions should they study?
EA: Pavilions in general do a good job of blending hospitality and education components, whereas in trade shows it's a selling scenario that drives the design. Many times trade show exhibits try to define distinct areas too sharply: "Here's a conference area ... here's where the hospitality bar and cafés are ... oh, and over on this side is where the educational stuff happens."
But some pavilions tried an interesting variation on that. In the Belgium Pavilion, for example, they combined diamond-cutting, cosmetics-manufacture, and chocolate-making in one area, where people could watch the demonstration of these native Belgian industries and even buy anything from bonbons to a diamond-studded tennis bracelet. People could watch and take part in this all-in-one area instead of navigating zone to zone, which individually might not have had the power they all did cumulatively. I thought the concentrated energy it brought was refreshing.
Now transfer that to a trade show exhibit. Imagine having your education area right in the same area as hospitality. You might have a multi-touch table in there where you can play tactile games, fill out a survey, do a little face-to-face marketing, and have refreshments, all in one fell swoop. Instead of pushing attendees through the exhibit like a chute, they might stay and linger longer because they're immersed in your environment.
EX: Did you identify any trends at Expo that might make their way to the trade show floor?
EA: Faceted design continues to grow. It’s marked by a skewed geometric look with clean lines. Germany and Canada’s pavilions are good examples of this. Cadillac’s new prototype cars have it as well. Look at their new models and you can see the same angular approach to design. In fact I was just at the Tiffany store in Copley Plaza in Boston, where the current window displays have a similar faceted look. I’m positive that same sharp, modernist design will be trickling down from the Expo and industrial design into trade shows.
EX: What kinds of projection technology did you see that might impact trade shows and events?
EA: Much of what I saw already exists — projections on water, for example, and of course LEDs. LEDs have been around for decades, but it was taken to another level there. The Oil Pavilion's facade at night was a spectacular light show, to name one of many examples of architecture that had integrated LEDs into the basic design rather than just as an added-on frill. The Shanghai Corporate Pavilion (aka the Dream Cube) is another. The entire facade of that massive structure was covered with LEDs that were linked to computers and sensors. The computers and sensors could measure the movement and volume of people clapping and yelling. That motion and sound created an ever-changing abstract light show on the outside. On that scale it cost millions, I'm sure, but as the technology becomes more widespread you may see LEDs become an integral part of booth design.
EX: Turning it around, what could Expo 2010 pavilions learn from trade shows?
EA: What trade shows do beyond pavilions is distinct measurement. Pavilions aren't there to build leads and sell a product, but they do want a sense of who's been there and how to cultivate interest. For example, many countries’ pavilions promote their vacation opportunities, while the Indonesia Pavilion even had an employment area. If their goals were to market these aspects, I didn't notice any innovative efforts to measure the results.
In a related vein, many pavilions could have followed up with attendees by collecting e-mail addresses or other contact information. With very rare exception — such as the Information and Communications Pavilion, which used handheld devices that asked for your e-mail address — I didn't notice any post-expo follow-up. Most pavilions seemed to ignore the idea of stretching the expo experience. Trade shows, on the other hand, are keenly aware of the value of extending the show experience.
A good trade show exhibit is like a good dinner party: The host always knows who everyone is, who's talking to whom, who's having a good time, and who isn't. With more sophisticated tracking and interactive technology — RFID, interactive consoles like those at the Information and Communications Pavilion — the next world's fair (Expo 2015 in Milan, Italy) can be that kind of host.
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