Trade Shows: The Customers First Impression of You
Quite a few years ago, before I decided to leave the hotel industry, I worked for Hilton Hotels Corp as the director of marketing in one of their many fine convention hotels. One of the real perks for the sales people in the hotels was to be able to go to the American Society of Association Executives convention and work the exhibit booth with the convention bureau staff. For me, it was a great experience to see and experience a whole new world of creative marketing by cities from around the country.
After walking the ASAE show over the course of several days, After a few trips up and down the aisles, I soon realized that a few of the cities had it all and many were from the wrong side of the tracks. The cities like Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, etc. had huge island booths that for me, was something right out of fantasy-land; however you then saw the row and rows of concave shaped booths with cities named Jacksonville, Tulsa, etc. that all looked the same with each person standing proudly behind their little pedestal with a big smile on their face, which sort of told me that they were the have nots. All I can remember is looking down each row first and if it was a row of curved frames, I would skip it. At the time I did not really know the significance of what I had described to others, but I certainly had a fixed impression about pop up displays.
Well, over 30 years have passed since that day when I formed my initial opinion about pop up displays. Oddly enough, a few years later I even got into the trade show business by starting a decorating company, then began manufacturing portable displays and yes, a few years later I even created a version of a pop up display myself.
I have to say that one thing I learned a long time ago about business was that “the market is always right,” and not having one of the most popular products to ever come out of the display industry would be a monumental mistake. But is a pop up display the product I should have to market my business with?
In order to finish my thought on this subject; yes,it would be a big mistake to be a trade show display company and not have pop up displays to market, but is pretty easy to get caught up in the rush of emotion when, after your first show, you experience some success and get into a rut by just doing the same thing each year and not growing into the image as a mature supplier in your industry, but rather always looking like the new guy.
As a matter of fact, I will make that my next topic in this series on Pop Up Displays.
Lowell Nickens is the owner of Shopforexhibits.com and Shopfordisplays.com; both of which offer perhaps the largest inventory of higher quality trade show displays found anywhere on the internet at very competitive prices.
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