“We don’t do that kind of ‘barking.’ We’re a respectable business, and people know we make a high quality product, and we don’t need it. It’s not for us, bye.”
And then he hung up.
If it hadn’t just happened to me, I wouldn’t have believed it.
That was the founder of a company that exhibits at trade shows, and we had connected to talk about his lead generation strategies for the booth.
When I told him about how I create custom designed interactive presentations to engage attendees, make them laugh, and weave the marketing message into the fun that’s when he snapped, and hung up.
And I get it.
There are so many wacky unprofessional strategies that people use, that I can understand where he was coming from.
But it was his assertion that they were a respectable company and therefor didn’t need to improve awareness that struck me as the weirdest part of the exchange.
Counterpoint
A friend of mine attended CES (a huge electronics trade show) earlier this year.
He recently told me about a video he took while he was there. He explained what it was, and I immediately asked him to send it over to me.
Let me set it up for you before you watch it.
It’s the United States Postal Service’s booth. It’s huge. Gigantic even!
You already know who the post office is. You know what they’re about. They’re a respectable business.
You wouldn’t think they need any help in the brand recognition category, would you?
And, yet, they still have an in-booth presenter whose sole job is to engage attendees!
He’s the guy in the white shirt holding a microphone, and he’s in the lower right corner of the video to start.
Give it a watch and I’ll meet you back under the video.
Pretty cool, right?
There are a lot of details to cover, and I might cover them in a future post but the main thing I wanted to draw your attention to is even the USPS recognizes the need to have a proactive exhibiting marketing strategy.
You’re never too big, or too small to escape that detail. Never.
The Takeaway
So if you recognize that successful exhibitors take proactive steps to make the most out of their trade show opportunity, then let’s talk.
We’re at the forefront of the most cutting edge experiential marketing strategies that leverage high impact interactive experiences, so let’s have a chat about how we can make your next show unbelievable.
