ICD's Experience at the AEM Exhibitor Education Meeting

AEM Exhibitor Education Meeting, May 18th-19th, 2010

Danielle and Catherine attended this meeting as ICD sponsored the AEM vendors meeting, and is the  chosen vendor for CONEXPO translations. Here is Danielle's insights on the meeting:

The CONEXPO Trade Show can appear quite daunting at first glance: In March 2011, over 2,000 exhibitors from countries all over the world will come together for a five day trade show in Las Vegas. During the 2008 CONEXPO show, over 144,600 industry professionals representing 28,000 companies attended the show. Come to think of it, even after a second or third glance, the CONEXPO is still an imposing figure. How does a company prepare to exhibit at a show of this magnitude?
This is exactly the question that The AEM Exhibitor Education Meeting sought to answer for its attendees. Over the course of two days, industry professionals and trade show analysts provided seminars on a diverse range of topics, such as marketing, booth design and how to create the best return on investment. However, two topics seemed to be the underlying message of the show: the importance of branding your company, and the need to create a goal or objective for your company experience at CONEXPO.
Branding your company into a unique entity within your industry is essential to stand out in a tradeshow of 2,000+ exhibitors. Creating a Branding Proposition for your company means promoting your company not just as “the best of the best,” but instead as the only company that does what you do. How will we stand apart as different than our top 3 competitors at the show? To do this, we will need to create a brand that goes deeper than great quality, low prices and excellent customer service, and instead look at what makes us unique and memorable within the industry.
It is also important to have an explicit goal or objective for exhibiting at CONEXPO. Without a clear objective, it becomes too easy to be swept up into the enormity of the CONEXPO show. Before the show, staff will need to be trained on how to accomplish our goals, the booth will need to be designed to best reflect our objective, and marketing materials will need to be sent out that will aid our goals. During the show, every action the company takes should be working towards our final goal. After the show, a thorough analysis and reflection will need to be taken to make sure all of our efforts were used to accomplish our goals for CONEXPO. March 2011 may seem like a long way off, but every moment of planning will be essential to create a positive experience for International Communication by Design at CONEXPO.

The Changing Face of Trade Shows

My last post got a lot of responses from people, and Jeff from sales decided to share his own experience from a recent trade show. In Jeff's own words and a picture of Jeff, so you can visualize him actually telling you about his experience.

"While attending a trade show in Las Vegas, I had a few observations on how America and thus the world is doing business. This show was traditionally among the top five attended trade shows annually in Las Vegas. This year attendance was down 35% from last year. Sad to say, last week the Las Vegas Convention Bureau announced that hotel occupancy for the first week of February was down 40%. Not good news for Vegas for now, but in the long run, maybe.

AHH, but not all is lost. When I was walking the show, talking with exhibitors I heard good news. The “Looky Lous” or in the construction industry, the “two fisted beer drinkers” were, for the most part, gone. So who was attending? Simple answer, the Decision Makers! As many exhibitors informed me, the number of leads may be down, but the quality of the lead is very high. Instead of construction companies sending a job foreman to the trade show for a week of vacation, the Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents or the Head of Purchasing were walking the floors and looking for deals.

More good news. Like the attendee’s, the exhibiting manufacturers did not have their Regional Sales Manager or National Account Manager working the exhibit booth. They were out working their territories and hopefully selling in this economy, or at the very least letting their customers know that they are still alive. The CEO’s, Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents, Directors of Corporation Communications, Directors of International Marketing and in some cases Senior Engineer’s were working the booths.

Bottom line, the decision makers from both sides of the isle were there, the equipment was carefully looked over, and pending projects were discussed and even the future was talked about. Maybe the attendance was down, maybe the exhibitors learned it doesn’t take key chains and drink insulators to sell equipment worth $2K to $2M. What it takes is getting back to the basics of doing business. Putting the correct parties together at one time. My comment as I walked away from talking with a VP of this or that company was, “Now lets sell, put America back to work and the World will follow.” To which I would see a smile and two thumbs up!"


Thanks Jeff.