COLUMN As the Saw Turns
What’s Old is New
I
recently spent two days in a series of meetings focused on sales strategy for our organization. The consensus of many in our industry is that our business is changing, and we must change with it. There is more of a focus on interacting with the tradeshow audience, on engaging and creating experiences for attendees. Everyone is talking about being experiential and everyone is suddenly pitching their expertise in this area. The weird thing to me (perhaps because I’ve been around this industry so long) is that this is not a new concept. I of ExhibitorLIVE, and By Jim Obermeyer remember sitting in his message of buildTS2 conference sessions in ing stronger relationships with the late ‘80s and ‘90s when customers resonated well with Allen Konopacki, an industhat audience. try guru at the time, was And here we are almost 20 talking about how we must years later talking about stratbecome more marketing egy and engaging the audience focused and pay more atand creating experiences like tention to the audience and it’s some new idea. Not really. how to get them engaged. What are we actually talking I remember meeting with about here? We’re talking Fred Kitzing, founder of about finding ways to interact Kitzing, Inc., in Chicago, and with the attendees, to create an talking about strategy for experience for the attendees in engaging audiences, setting our exhibit, to engage attendobjectives and goals and meaees in a conversation about our suring results. He was a huge product and our brand, to have proponent of creating experithem leave with our message ences on the show floor. and remember it. I’m sorry, In 1999, Jim Gilmore’s book, but this is nothing new. This is The Experience Economy, was exactly what thought leaders in released and a lot of us in this this industry have been talking industry found it to be a great about for decades. resource. Gilmore spent a Professional booth staff number of years on the faculty trainers and those of us that
have done it “on the side” for our clients, have been talking about engaging audiences for a very long time. I remember three such experiences that we created more than 20 years ago: Working for a major defense contractor who had a big part in Operation Desert Storm, we created an experience where the tradeshow audience became an audience for a speech by General Norman Schwarzkopf (actually an actor we hired) talking about the reliability and performance of this company’s weaponry used in this conflict. The audience was convinced he was the real thing and were enthralled by his message. In another show featuring robotic technology where we were wanting the audience to experience the technolo-
gy and ‘interact’ with it, we had robots pouring coffee for attendees. The message was about how precise robotic technology had become. The audience was fully engaged, and fully caffeinated. And then there was the work we did for a pet products company, where in every city we did a show we worked with local animal shelters and breeders to bring puppies into the show for a day and have the audience engage with the puppies while they heard a message about the product. Who doesn’t want to hold a puppy for a few minutes? Creating experiences on the show floor is not a new thing. Interacting with the audience is not new. I think what’s new is the technology—virtual reality, augmented reality, Microsoft HoloLens and the advances in gamification and digital marketing around the tradeshow. Perhaps that is what is driving this resurgence. If it causes more exhibitors to spend more time thinking about engaging audiences, that would be a good thing. But the concept of engaging an audience, of creating interactive experiences, is not new. Perhaps it’s just never been fully embraced by an industry caught up in designing and building exhibits. Maybe this time around the idea will stick. See you on the show floor. Jim Obermeyer has been in the tradeshow industry 35 years, both as a corporate tradeshow manager and exhibit house owner. He is currently a vice president at Hamilton Exhibits and can be reached at jobermeyer@hamilton-exhibits.com.
12 November/December 2018 Exhibit City News
012_Col_ATST_1118.indd 1
10/25/18 10:32 AM