The show must go on. Unfortunately, for many reasons, there was no way there could be an inperson NAMM Show this year. So, we asked both retailers and manufacturers what they thought about the virtual Believe in Music Week, which took place Jan. 18 to Jan. 22. The questions we asked were: How was your Believe in Music Week experience? What did you like most about the virtual show? Do you think could be improved upon if we have future virtual trade shows? Here are the responses we received:
“Our contacts were very few (less than 10), and most of those were people were looking to sell us something or looking for endorsements. I only engaged in the site to look at a couple of video sessions — one by Dan Erliwine, who I can watch forever. I checked my page daily, and then did other things that were more productive. I don’t want to judge NAMM too harshly, nor do I want to criticize the platform. I just do not see it as a worthwhile replacement or good investment of marketing dollars and hours. In my opinion, I prefer driving traffic to our website, where we have much better materials for presenting our products and we don’t have to reinvent it for a virtual trade show. Our lack of contacts may also have to do with us selling accessories. We are not a ‘destination’ booth, more of a stop-by-while-walking-around for most of our traffic at the normal shows. We wanted to be involved to support the industry, but the results were dismal to say the least.” —Patrick J. Bovenizer, Vice President, Peterson Electro-Musical Products Inc.
“I liked Yamaha’s combination of content. I think most of the manufacturers did a great job. If there was a way to have a similar look to scheduling of workshops and manufacturer demos, it would be nice if it could happen — maybe some kind of loose boilerplate script.” —Tom Fonner
We ask Believe in Music Week attendees what they thought of NAMM’s virtual trade show
Virtual’s Reality By Brian Berk
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MARCH 2021