If it's worth doing ...

Putting the shine on your stand

 

How often do you shine your shoes?  Well if you're anything like me unless I've been tramping through mud (which is rare on the trip from the office to the car), not very often at all.

Which is why at a recent exhibition I was pleased to be able to sit comfortably and let my shoes have the full treatment free courtesy of the exhibiting company whose stand I was visiting.

Whilst this was going on of course the stand sales staff were busy qualifying me about my reason for attending the show etc. and as I was receiving this pampering gratis I felt obliged to show willing and engage in a fuller conversation than perhaps I normally would when dealing with a potential supplier.

Later I called up for details, the company who supplied the equipment and people are called James Shoe Care.  Normally based in Canary Wharf they are willing to venture out to exhibitions with their raised chair and shiners for fees that start at £495 a day.

The website is www.jamesshoecare.co.uk

Jon Howarth - Manning the Stand - Exhibition Training

... And for my next trick I'll triple your number of visitors

I recently spoke to a colleague who was raving about a Magician he'd seen at a recent trade show. This guy was pulling in the crowds and even qualifying prospects for the people manning the stand.

Intrigued to discover more I contacted the company responsible called CrowdMagnets.  The way these guys work is very clever.  They go through a questionnaire with the exhibitor to understand their promotional objectives, key benefits and qualification criteria and then they work these into their act.  So while they're entertaining visitors they are promoting the company's messages, qualifying individuals and the Magician's even hands them on to the exhibitors sales staff.

Phil Jay from CrowdMagnets claims they normally triple visitor numbers to a stand and with fees from £1,500 per day (plus expenses) it sounds like it would be a great return on investment for many exhibitors.

You can find out more at www.crowdmagnets.com

Jon Howarth - Manning the Stand - Exhibition Training

 

Dragons Invest In Exhibition Attractor

This week we saw YrWall featured on Dragons Den.  Two entrepreneurs succeeded in attracting an investment of £50,000 for their digital graffiti wall.

If you didn't see the programme YrWall is looks a bit like a large rectangular projection screen attached to a PC, the idea is you spray onto the 'wall' with a digitised spray can that mimics how a real can would work. So you can create your own graffiti including changing colours, spraying symbols etc.

One of the key markets for the invention was as an exhibition attractor, customers would come on to the stand and have fun creating their graffiti.  There was also the possibility of having their artwork instantly converted into a T-Shirt they could walk away with.

Deborah Meaden had a go and seemed to enjoy herself and eventually after some haggling she and Peter Jones made a joint investment.  Theo was quite dismissive and thought the exhibition attraction market was limited because the novelty would quickly wear off.  He were probably right, however in the meantime whilst it's attracting lots of publicity it could be a great addition to your exhibition stand.

The website is http://www.yrwall.com/

Silent Juggling? It's the future!

No really, it is.  I recently visited the Exhibiting Show in London.  Two guys caught my eye, they were juggling clubs whilst wearing headphones.  This is not something you see every day of the week so I asked for an explanation.

 

One of the gentleman fitted me with a pair of headphones and began to juggle, the voice and music in the headphones was timed to fit with the movements of the jugglers, the effect was mesmerising. So while I was being entertained the company were telling me all about their products and services.

So for instance if the voice was telling me the company were based 'all around the country' the actor would start spinning whilst he was juggling.  The show apparently lasted 4 minutes although it felt a lot less. During this time they had my undivided attention and were able to plant whatever messages that liked in my brain.

The company are based in Holland and are called www.moreballs.com they do all sorts of event work but the Silent Jugglers is normally used to attract visitors to an exhibition stand.  It works really well.

Next week exhibition attraction - singing mice or something equally surreal.

Jon Howarth - Manning the Stand - Exhibition Training

Episode II A New Sale ... How a Stars Wars DVD exhibition giveaway turned into £100,000 contract

Following on from the jigsaw idea in my last entry (which was far beyond my budget) I came up with a cheaper alternative.  So I bought a small chest for $30 from Pottery Barn (the US version of Habitat), the kind of thing that pirates would keep their treasure in and a combination lock for $5 from a hardware store.  Then I printed out lots of incorrect combinations and four correct ones onto small squares of paper with our stand name and location.   The idea was that we would hand them to people as they entered the exhibition hall and invite them to try and unlock the treasure chest.

Our next exhibition was in South Carolina and in the rush of organising the event I forgot to buy any prizes to go in the chest.  I only realised this at 9 p.m. the night before the event.  The only place open to buy anything was a boardwalk next to the exhibition centre which mainly consisted of restaurants and a couple of gift shops, so the best I could come up with were two bodyshop baskets and two Star Wars DVD’s.

The next day we opened the stand and my plan worked better than I could have imagined, we were overwhelmed with visitors anxious to see if they had the winning combination.  The chest was a great ice breaker and we were able to secure lots of good leads.  However on the afternoon of final day a gentleman was walking past the stand and my colleague in the aisle asked if he would like to try his luck.  At first the man declined but my colleague shouted hopefully after him “You could win a Star Wars DVD” at this the man stopped and turned around and I was expecting him to make a sarcastic comment about how pathetic our prize was, but he decided to have a go. 

The combination the visitor was given was a correct one (I suspect that my colleague deliberately gave him a winning combination but he’s never admitted it) and the gentleman was delighted with his prize as coincidentally he had recently promised his son the original Star Wars film.  It turns out the visitor was Head of IT for a large bank headquartered on Rhode Island, as we chatted about what we did his interest grew and we gave him a demonstration of our software and he subsequently invited us to meet some colleagues at the bank.  Three months later they signed a contract for us to supply software and services worth the equivalent of £100k.

The moral of the story for all exhibitors out there is don’t overlook the power of an innovative attractor.  It doesn’t have to cost the earth but it needs to be something more interesting than a goldfish bowl for business cards with ‘prize draw’ written on the side.

More on attractors in next week’s blog.

Jon Howarth - exhibition training