Fish Where the Fish Are

Need to Tell Your Client’s Story to the Media?

Catch Them Where Success is a Virtual Guarantee – at an Industry Trade Show

As communication professionals, we all have come to learn that the basic premise of marketing is to deliver the right message through the proper channels to impact a desired target audience.

Or as legendary advertising icon Earle Palmer Brown once told me, “take the right fishing rod in the best boat you can find and ‘fish where the fish are.’”

While this philosophy certainly holds true for both traditional advertising and social media, those same principles also apply to the world of public relations.  Create the ideal message, deploy the most powerful and effective communication channels you can find and then deliver that message succinctly and directly to your target audience.

Only instead of targeting government officials, industry leaders or the general public, when it comes to media relations our target audience consists of editors, reporters, producers, directors, assignment managers, photojournalists, bureau chiefs, desk editors and bloggers.

And when tasked with the mission of introducing a new, innovative, groundbreaking or game-changing product, where can you find the largest singular gathering or collection of such people?  All together and all in one place?

At an industry trade show, of course.

Why?

Because for three, four or five days, anywhere from five hundred to five thousand members of the media gather at some of the world’s leading shows, conventions, expositions and meetings with one singular purpose in mind – to cover the news of that particular industry emerging from this one highly-specialized and finely-focused special event.

In other words, these events spawn an army of journalists – large, small and in between – all of whom are looking for stories.

Fish where the fish are … indeed …

Here in Washington, D.C. the public relations firm of Brotman|Winter|Fried Communications has perfected a trade show public relations strategy and they shared with us their thoughts on how to design a campaign that will maximize client exposure at these events, and in the process take full advantage of every benefit such shows have to offer.  The biggest of them all is, of course, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which attracts more than 5,000 members of the media; but other events – such as CTIA Wireless, South-By-Southwest, Toy Fair, the Home+Housewares Show, Infocomm, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) Global Real Estate Convention, the International Association of Assembly Managers (IAAM) Conference & Trade Show, even the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s SHOT Show – all operate under the same principle:  gather the biggest names in their respective field under one roof and then invite, encourage and support the efforts of the media who follow and document that industry.

And while each show offers different opportunities and presents different ways of securing coverage, from a campaign management perspective, the same general philosophy applies to each event.

BWF suggests embracing the following principles when it comes to promoting products at trade shows:

1.     Hopefully you will start with a great product, but even if the product is less than stellar, you need to identify some unique selling propositions.

2.     Learn nuances of each particular show – every show is different.

3.     Compile media lists through various sources including the lists provided by the shows.

4.     Begin the communication phase early.  Send multiple releases over a short period of time.  Remember, you’re competing with thousands of other companies for a journalist’s brief attention span.

5.     Engage in early follow-up efforts, weeks before the show instead of days – and through those follow-ups, build relationships

6.     Take advantage of all free or cost-effective opportunities associated with the show.

7.     Seek out existing media events.  Some shows offer media showcase events to which they invite large numbers of media.  Take advantage of those.

8.     Partner with the show – find features offered by the show and use the ones that are cost-effective and that make sense.

9.     Look for 11th hour opportunities, some of which are offered by organizations outside the scope of the show itself.  Several such opportunities can be extremely cost effective if purchased at the last minute.

10.  Lastly, have a major presence on-site.  Engage in social media activities from your client’s booth, work the show floor and book meetings and interviews.

Follow these rules and you are assured to get produce optimal exposure results from your trade show experience.

-Thanks to Steve Winter (swinter@aboutbwf.com, 703-533-4825) President of Brotman|Winter|Fried, a Sage Communications Company for the incredible information! Is your company ready for tradeshow PR?  Contact BWF!

Keep Your Friends Close and Your Competition Closer

The tradeshow floor is filled with hundreds of prospects waiting to meet you.  Unfortunately, the floor is also filled with booths after booths of your competition, scoping out your potential clients and trying to woo them over to their side.  A good agent always keeps track of his contacts – friend or foe – so how do you make the most of sharing the room with your competition?

Investigation: Send out spies to see what other companies are doing to draw a crowd.  Maybe you’ll find an idea that inspires you to try something new at the next show!

Make Friends:  You’re still going to be competing with these people no matter what, so why not make friends with the employees?  You never know who could be working for your competition.  Maybe there’s the ideal employee for you sitting unhappily at the table down the aisle, working for the wrong company!

Find References: Maybe you can’t help a potential client with a particular order.  Try to snoop around and find out which companies are at the show, so you will be able to refer your prospect to someone who can.  Even though you can’t help them this time, your prospect will remember how helpful you were and might think of you in the future for other orders.

Even though you may be competing for clients, you can still have a good working relationship with the other vendors at a show.  You never know when having an extra contact in the business might come in handy!

Booth Setup Day

It’s the day before the show.  You’ve bought your booth space and spent weeks and months working to ensure your space at the trade show will draw the most prospects possible. You wake up on Booth Setup Day fully ready to hit this one right out of the park, confident that your efforts will pay off.  You walk into the convention center…and right into what could easily pass as a set for a post-apocalyptic movie.  Making your way through throngs of people, you push, shove, sprint, and crawl to your booth space.  You make it there alive, but what do you do now?

Expect Complete Chaos:  The room will be dirty.  There will be people running around everywhere trying to get their booth in order.  There will be no food and, if your show takes place in the summer, potentially no air conditioning.  Plan for all of these!  Don’t try to wear a suit to this.  It may look classy at first, but after hours in these conditions, you’ll be hot, sweaty, and potentially spending a lot of money on a dry-cleaning bill to fix rips and tears from the toils of booth setup.

Lots of Exercise:  You may have to park multiple blocks away from the show site.  Purchasing and using the proper cases for all of your booth accessories will help the transportation process immensely.  Are you the only person from your company going to the show?  Make sure you plan transportation ahead of time.  You don’t want to accidentally get locked out of the convention center with half of your materials inside the building and half still in your hands, searching for another entrance!  While intricate booths may look amazing to potential clients, they potentially could be hard work to put together. Plan ahead and bring tools you may need for setup so you aren’t searching for anything when the time comes.  Undercover Printer also offers easy-setup displays and backwalls that give you a professional look without the stress.

Prepare for What-If’s:  What if there’s a shipping issue and your display is stuck in the Midwest in a flood?  Make sure your staff can think on their feet if a potential client is around, booth or no booth.  Coming from out of town and need a booth in a hurry?  Undercover Printer offers 24 hr turn on booth displays.  What if someone trips and falls, taking part of your booth down with them?  Do you have the spare parts to save the day if disaster strikes?

Intimidated yet?  Despite the potential for disaster present at each setup day, a little bit of planning can help keep you in control of the situation.  And even if everything spirals out of your control, just remember it will all be worth it on show day, when you just might meet your dream client!

-by Jenna Marie, Chief Code Breaker

Brush Pass Giveaway: Bags

Undercover Printer's Bag Ladies

In the spy world, a “brush pass” is when two agents meet for a very short period of time and something of value is passed between the two.  In the trade show world, you will be making a large number of brush passes as you hand out promotional items to potential clients.  How can you be sure the items you are passing out are staying with your prospects?  Our agents have been on the case, and we’ve discovered evidence that a good quality bag could be the answer to all of your promotional item worries!  Why?

They’re helpful:  With all the loot people will be picking up at trade shows, their hands can get full pretty quickly.  A good bag will be sought out by people laden with other promotional goodies from all around the show.

They disguise your competition:  When you give away a good quality bag to your potential clients, all of your competition’s merchandise will end up making their way in there.  For the entirety of the show, your brand will be the only one seen as all the others stay hidden in your bag!

They stay with clients:  Even after the rest of the show materials from inside your bag are cleared out, people can always use an extra bag.  People use nonwoven bags for grocery shopping, storage, and transportation all the time and are always looking for more quality ones, especially if they are free!

They’re easy to customize:  There are many options for you to truly customize your bag to represent your company in the best way possible.  Nonwoven bags are always a customer favorite and are the most likely to be used after the show as opposed to plastic or paper.  Bags can be printed in full color to perfectly match your brand’s logo and things like additional pockets can help keep your prospects organized.  With bags priced as low as $1, you can find the perfect bag for any budget!

Whatever you choose, don’t be afraid to spend a little bit more to ensure that you are getting your money’s worth.  More expensive products will generally be better made and will stay in the hands of your potential customers longer. You can also offer to sponsor the bag that the show is giving out!  These bags, handed out to everyone at the start of the show, will ensure that your brand gets into the hands of every single person attending the show.

Hand out a quality bag and watch your brand walk around the show!

-by Jenna Marie, Chief Code Breaker

Making the Most of Tabletop Downtime

Tabletop Show

You’ve gotten to the location of your tabletop show.  Everything is set up and looking exactly as you wanted and you are ready to go!  The only problem?  You’ve got some time to kill before the speaker is done and the clients start walking around.  What do you do to pass the time?  Don’t just sit there staring at the wall or playing with your phone!  You don’t want pass up any opportunity to get more business during your downtime.  There are always things to do that can help you be a better vendor to your potential clients.

Get the Intel: Go listen to the speaker!  The people sitting in on the lecture are your prospective clients.  Listening to the speaker might give you information that can help you be a better, more knowledgeable vendor for them.  Maybe you’ll hear something that can help you help a client later on!

Make Contacts: Get to know the vendors around you!  Maybe you will find a prospective customer in one of the other vendors!  Also, if a prospect comes to you with an order you don’t usually deal with, maybe you will have met someone who can help.  When you refer your potential client to another vendor, it saves them the trouble of hunting one down.  They will remember how helpful you were and keep you in mind for later orders!

Investigate: Snoop around and check out your competition!  See what other vendors may be doing to try to draw a crowd.  Maybe you will be inspired by one of their ideas and find something that can help you draw a bigger crowd next time!

Work: As a last resort, go through everything you’ve been avoiding doing for work.  Is there anything you can do now?  Do it!  You have plenty of downtime, so don’t waste it!

With all this to do, there isn’t any time to get bored at a table top show!

What about you?  What do you do to keep busy during the speaker session?

-by Jenna Marie, Chief Code Breaker

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Modern Spy Tech: Trade Show Apps

Trade Show Smart Phone App

In the upcoming months, millions of people will be attending trade shows and user conferences!  They will be using their best spy skills to find the perfect vendors to work with or the most useful classes to attend.  How can you, as an event planner, help them complete their missions?  Many trade show planners are taking advantage of smart phone technology to create apps for their show attendees.  Apps can provide a great deal of information minus the mess of creating millions of paper copies, but what features would make your app the most user-friendly for your attendees?

Maps:  Your event may attract the attention of attendees who live far away and may be unfamiliar with the area.  Your app can provide them with important clues, such as directions from the airport to the exhibition center, and local hotels and restaurants.  On a smaller scale, you can also include a map of the exhibition center.

Directory:  Even with all the best sleuthing of your show’s attendees, it’s possible they might not be able to meet up with everyone on their lists.  Providing a directory will ensure that contacts from the show are being made long after the last booth is packed up.  You could also put QR codes on badges that, when scanned by the app, lead the user to contact information for the badge owner.

Social media: Your show’s attendees will probably be on multiple social media outlets throughout the event trying to make appointments and new contacts.  Integrate social media on your app and ensure that the attention will be kept to your app and your show.

Schedule:  With all the flyers exchanging hands, paper schedules could easily get lost in the piles of paper people will be collecting throughout your show.  A virtual schedule will ensure your attendees will always know the times and locations of speakers and classes.

Notification System:  How do you go about informing your attendees of a change in room or schedule? With a notification system on your event app, people would be able to receive important information quickly and easily.  You can also add session reminders for registered attendees.

Despite possible downsides, such as difficulties with different kinds of phones or data plans, event apps have the potential to be a very useful addition to your show.  Not especially tech savvy?  Many companies, including Guidebook and TapWalk are available that can help you create your own app from a set of templates.  If your conference or event needs are more advanced and you want to incorporate special functions such as GPS location services or other custom features, you can take advantage of the expertise of mobile app development companies like Segue Technologies, Inc.  With this new technology and the user-friendly atmosphere that follows, you can be certain your show will  be a favorite of attendees.

-by Jenna Marie, Chief Code Breaker

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The 6 Booth Staffers We All See (though we wish we wouldn’t!)

At a trade show, a vendor’s main goal is to get noticed.  They want their booth to be the talk of the show due to the knowledge of their staff or the usefulness of their product, but sometimes it backfires when one of their employees creates an embarrassing persona for himself!  We’ve all seen these people at shows, though we may wish we hadn’t!

Squirrel Hoarding His Nuts     Uninterested     Overeager Carnie

The Overeager Carnie:

Typical Saying: “Step right up, step right up!!  Have I got the product for you!!!”

We get it.  It’s exciting to be in a room with so many opportunities and a little nerve-wracking to think of how you are going to impress all those potential clients, but these Energizer Bunnies of the exhibition center take it way too far.  They force their way to the edge of the aisle, calling out to anyone and everyone to come see the best darn product since sliced bread!  Energy is good for any sales situation, but too much begins to look fake and people passing their booth feel like they’ve stepped out of the trade show and into a traveling circus!

The Uninterested:

Typical Saying: “…”

Ever been interested in a booth’s product and had to spend ages searching for an employee who didn’t consider himself too busy to answer your questions? Whether they’re deep in conversation with their coworkers or completely shutting out the entire world to read their newspaper, these booth staffers make it perfectly clear that you are infringing on their time.  After what feels like hours of scouring the booth for someone to help you, you decide to leave them to their solitude, wondering what they expected to do at a trade show if not talk to people!

The Texter:

Typical Saying: “OMG LOL”

Once The Texter’s phone comes out, it’s like some indestructible force field surrounds him, preventing him from any contact with the outside world until he’s finally beaten his best score at Angry Birds.  A parade of dancing elephants could have passed through the convention center and he would be none the wiser as long as that phone is in his hands.

The Stalker:

Typical Saying: “Fancy meeting you here again!”

You sit next to a perfectly nice person at one of the show lectures.  He mentions his product and it’s exactly what you’re looking for so you exchange business cards.  You leave the seminar and all seems to be well…until you start seeing him everywhere!  You pass him in the hallway, he tries to strike up conversation.  You head to the elevator after happy hour, he’s there waiting for you.  You go visit another booth, he’s right next to you, shoving his way into another conversation with you.  Soon you consider changing your name, dying your hair, and disappearing without a trace just to escape another awkward encounter.  His attempts to be friendly backfire substantially when you find yourself shredding his business card as soon as you finally stop feeling like you’re being watched!

The Squirrel Hoarding His Nuts

Typical Saying: “*crunchcrunchcrunch*”

There are few things more awkward than trying to talk to someone who has to keep covering their mouth because they won’t stop snacking!  Like a squirrel, this trade show baddie keeps stuffing more and more nuts, chips, pizza, or whatever else is available into their mouth the entire time you’re speaking to them.  They shoot out stats about their product between bites, but you just find yourself fervently hoping that he doesn’t accidentally spit all over you!

The Car Salesman:

Typical Saying: “You don’t need this, but let me try to sell it to you anyway!”

The fast-talking Car Salesman will say anything to try to get a sale, but all you really get from him is a strong aura of smarmy.  Even after you say you’re not interested, he’ll rave about how amazing his product is, or how great a deal he can get you for something you don’t even need!  If you try to escape his iron grip, he finds a way to corner you and draw you back into the booth until you finally manage to break free, screaming to try to warn any unsuspecting passersby as you sprint back to the safety of the crowd!

These staffer archetypes have been at every trade show since the dawn of time.  Even though their behavior so obviously turns off potential clients, more and more offenders keep popping up!  Keep an eye out for these types in the staffers of your own booth, so your booth becomes trade show famous for only the right reasons.  Let your awesome product be the talk of the show, not your staffer’s antics!

What about you?  Is there another trade show horror story you’ve encountered people should be on the lookout for?

-by Jenna Marie, Chief Code Breaker

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Mission: Trade Show

So you’ve bought your booth space for the next trade show?  How much is it really costing you though? With the cost of displays, salaries for employees manning the booth, and promotional items, you are probably spending too much to risk an unsuccessful show, but how can you be certain your booth will draw in the contacts necessary to make your time and money worthwhile?

Think ahead.  Every good spy knows the importance of useful contacts.  You wouldn’t go into an important top secret mission without knowing who to meet, so why would you go to a trade show without knowing potential clients? Reach out through social media and try to find, and get to know, other people who will be there so you have leads before you even walk in the door.

Creativity.  Draw a crowd with a game or video.  Find a clever way to draw people into your booth that pertains to your particular business.  Anything that will help you establish a more personal relationship with potential clients is fair game, so be creative!

Effective Displays.  Small booths can be spectacular! Get creative with graphics and eye catching displays that will stand out from the rest.

This unique display fits perfectly in a 10-ft box space, but stands a crowd-attracting 11 feet tall!  While personalized booths like this may cost a bit more, they will pull their weight by attracting floods of impressed passersby.

Effective Staff.  Just as super sleuths are trained well before going out into the field, it’s important to train your staff beforehand if you want a truly successful show. It could be helpful to come up with a list of conversation openers to break the ice with potential clients without getting straight to business.  Dress your staff in black pants and branded, brightly colored shirts to complete the professional look.

A little planning plus a little more investment might just catch the eye of your dream revenue client!  How much are you willing to put into your next show?

-by Jenna Marie, Chief Code Breaker

Taking Back Uniforms

What do you wear to work?  It seems that more and more companies are jumping on the bandwagon of giving their employees uniforms to wear. For some, however, the word “uniforms” brings back memories of itchy plaid skirts, choking neckties, and pinching shoes from school as a kid.  Despite their less than stellar reputation, uniforms should not have to live in the shadows of bad connotations and unpleasant memories!  Good company apparel is bringing new light to a dark past. How?

Company Morale: While some may argue that company uniforms are detrimental to individuality and hamper creativity, I take the decidedly opposite view.  From soccer teams to high school marching bands, I’ve been a part of many teams in my life and have seen firsthand how a strong feeling of community can lead to greater productivity and success than a group of isolated individuals with little attachment to their team.  When someone feels like they are an integral part of a community, they feel more comfortable and are willing to work harder and express ideas, leading to a more efficient and imaginative office setting.

http://blog.ascentis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/EMPLOYEE_ENGAGEMENT.jpg

Casual Fridays: Office uniforms not your thing?  Some offices use company apparel for casual Fridays as a way to allow your employees to “dress down” a bit while still professionally representing the company.

Easier for Customers: One of the most obvious reasons for easily recognizable company apparel is probably also the most important. Ever had a question in a store and had to hunt down an employee?  Ever spent twenty minutes looking for someone before just giving up?  By giving your employees a simple uniform, you are making it that much for potential clients to get the help they need.  If they can’t find you, it will be difficult for them to support your business.

Out of Office: Company camaraderie does not end when the workday does!  More and more offices are sponsoring events like employee picnics, charity walk teams, and even interoffice competitions to better create a bond between coworkers. Wearing company apparel at these fun events will reinforce your company’s position in their minds as more than just someplace they go to make ends meet.

With all the easy-care, wrinkle-free, and stylish options available, employees can proudly wear your brand while being comfortable and looking professional.

-by Jenna Marie, Chief Code Breaker