Posted by
Barry Siskind
Community Manager
I sometimes feel like the orphaned cousin searching for recognition. When I read magazines that focus on marketing issues there is usually not much more than a passing reference to exhibitions as a legitimate member of the marketing community. Marketing conferences are the same.
So, if the marketing community doesn’t include us then who are we; communications, sales or a category on our own.
Where do exhibitions belong?
I have been told that there are (7) categories of marketing.This is where the buzz word integrated marketing stems. No one segement/tactic is more important than the other, but when used collectively they are more powerful.
The seven categories are-
Telemarketing
Internet Marketing
Direct Mail
Direct Sales
Radio/TV broadcasting
Tradeshows/Event Marketing
B to B advertising/marketing
There are only two areas where face to face contact is made. Tradeshow and Direct Sales. At this point the element of emotion plays a strong role in the sales cycle. All other marketing tactics will play a role to support the effectiveness of face to face contact. When measuring for results, each tactic plays a seperate role in the final decison to buy.It is surely wrong to say that tradeshow marketing delivered the greatest ROI over the other components when each of the others played a role in the sales cycle.It is also wrong to treat each tactic as an activity that has no affect (or has been affected) on the other tactics.
Tradeshows and direct sales are probably the most expensive items on the marketing menu and therefore get the greatest budget attention.They do not stand alone without help from the others.
These two component are emphasized the least in Marketing classes. Somehow both are vaugely mentioned or taught in college marketing classes. Maybe because they are viewed as “Sales” rather then “Marketing”.
Marketing tactics are all the things we do to create a selling situation. At this point, emotion plays a strong role to sign on the dotted line.
Side note: There is a masters degree in Exhibit Design and Marketing that is offered at FIT in NYC.
This program includes awareness of all marketing tactics, with a special emphasis on the exhibit environment and its effect on sales/communication.
I’m glad that this is finally being taught and not just learned through trial and error. This is how we all have become experts!
I completely agree with that
I am always saddened to see that Advertising agencies do not suggest or at times even discourage clients form participating in Exhibitions.
I wonder if there are figures like Turnover of the while industry worldwide, y the country and busineess generated figures available, which could be a good communication to send out to non-believers to begin with.
I also suggest that we should be all take memberships in advertising fraternity associations and probably begin the chage from being within.
You are right, we are all sad about the fact that we are not known enough by marketers, and that our presence is so poor in the marketing and commlunication education programmes. We should therefore work all together on this issue.
UFI will offer all of you very soon a 16 hours course, ready fo use by all marketing professors, fair organizers, students, exhibitors even.It has been developed with Professor Joerg Beier, from the Cooperative State University of Ravensburg in Germany, who is very much involved in this action of UFI to increase the recognition and the visibilty of the exhibition in the marketing mix. It will come out in the coming weeks, and will be available for free on our website! We will obviously inform all our members and the readers of UFI Info (more than 15 000 email addresses worldwide)about this good news. As the former edition, it will be in English, and we expect that a lot of countries will take the initiative to translate it into their own language, like they did 3 or 4 years ago (Chinese, Arabic, French, and many others…).
In fact, we all have to take care of our own marketing: make sure you are part of this effort!
Vincent (UFI MD)
No, we are not the poor cousins!
Yes, tradeshows are expensive compared to direct mail or advertising, but it is quite difficult and not exact enough to compare them with face to face communication.
Who, if not our industry, has the relevant data to enforce existing and establish new business relationships? Tradeshows offer the unique chance to combine those seven marketing categories, as Larry mentioned them. To me, one of the biggest problems is that they are regarded separately and not crossmedia! I can only repeat what Jochen Witt already said in 2009: Trade fair organizers will only be successful if they are able to offer communication services independent of place, medium and time. The organizer has to become a service provider, namely of integrated communication.
In my humble opinion, the “(7) categories” are misclassified as marketing, when I view them as “advertising” – as stated elsewhere, “a piece of the pie.”
FR: Marketing vs. Advertising: What’s the Difference? http://marketing.about.com/cs/advertising/a/marketvsad.htm
“The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as a pie, inside that pie you have slices of advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement. Advertising only equals one piece of the pie in the strategy.”
Naturally, this article fails to mention “live events,” either as either ‘marketing’ or ‘advertising.’ Oh well . . .
Another exception I take is the common proposition that ‘live events’ are expensive. Having a substantial background in retail taught me the truth about advertising, and that is, the more you spend on the tangible elements of a store (design and decor, seating, equipment, fixtures, etc.), the less you have available for intangible activities (marketing and advertising). Did Walmart understand this precept? Or, were they just lucky?
‘Live events’ compare very favorably since the exhibitor (and hence, the producer) spends little on the tangible (facility rental, decorating, electrical service, etc.) and receives an abundance of advertising in the offing – assuming the producer has done its job.
At issue here is the duration of the investment. Many assess booth rental for a weekend to a week as outrageously priced real estate. What it is, is the development of businesses for our exhibitors through the logic of collective action, and the fair and equitable management of the cooperative advertising benefits available through the show / exposition.
Unfortunately, this logic is lost in a recessionary economy. All exhibitors seem to care about is the decline in traffic, instead of the presence of interested buyers (i.e., the cup is always half empty).
Finally, I find no need to educate anyone further on the process of producing shows / expositions – at least not now . . . and until I retire. I already have enough to contend with.
UFI has developed some global figures on the exhibition industry. For example, in 2009 it was estimated that 31 400 fairs and exhibitions (of more than 500 square meters) were held every year. This corresponds to 109 million square meters of total net exhibition space rented by exhibitors.
Another useful figure is the number of exhibition venues worldwide. UFI identified almost 1 100 venues with a minimum of 5 000 square meters of indoor exhibition space.
Turnover generated by exhibitors would obviously be very interesting to know. However this is difficult to determine as many organizations are reluctant to provide this type of information.
Finally, it’s useful to note that exhibition activity strongly reflects GDP results. This explains the rapid growth of the exhibition industry in many regions of the world.
Christian
Chris,
You stated “… exhibition activity strongly reflects GDP results. This explains the rapid growth of the exhibition industry in many regions of the world.”
However, I find growth of the exhibition industry (i.e., growth of facilities) is a lagging indicator. Many facilities were already a Work-In-Progress when economies began to reverse globally.
Thereafter, the facilities fail to comprehend the fluctuation and respond with (or to) their stringent costs/price analysis — old ways of doing biz. The problem is, they need to reconcile cash (in)flow as the alternative to vacant structures. Often, they refuse and do so ignorantly identifying ‘COULD generate’ instead of a ‘MUST sustain’ financial analysis.
Said sweetly, I suspect organizers will eventually see lower costs of production once a few facility heads have hit the chopping block . . . so, that’s a good thing. The bad news is, more organizer competition will result to TRY to fill voids as the new dogs will attempt to eat old dogs.
Interesting debate Johnny… I don’t know what your background (organizer?) and your region are (US?). As far as I am concerned, I believe that there are many different situations depending on the region and sometimes the country you are in. Here are some facts in my view:
– low exhibition capacity necessarily increases in countries where the GDP grows fast (even when it takes time, as in India for instance). This unless, of course, a local country/city manages to position itself with strong existing arguments (in terms of accommodation and accessibility mainly).
– apart from very specific situations, building a venue is not a profitable business for the investor. Unless of course, the investor is the local authority and takes into account the overall economic impact. However what can be”justified” at local level is not necessarily true at national or regional (continental) level; there are now several countries with venue “overcapacity”… but there are also less and less of such projects, as even public investment is cautiously made
– yes, some venue (or organizing) practices are not ran efficiently; these are usually the old established (public) ones; but they survive, possibly indeed because they charge more than they should, also because they have now reimbursed their building costs (when these were actually taken into account); at the same time, the cost issue should not be one for the exhibitor if the show offers what it should in terms of contacts, orders, etc. I know many shows with a waiting list… due to the limited capacity of the venue. This in fact guarantees the quality of the show!
Having said all this, I agree that competition is likely to emerge… but slowly! When you look at the changes in the last decades, it has not been so significant and there are not many signs of this changing tomorrow morning! I believe more strongly in a change of regional market shares… which means that only the most efficient (or more subsidized!) practices from some countries will, eventually, survive!
I do not think we are in a cousin-level relation to marketing. Rather I believe we are fore-forefathers – this is why it looks we are handicapped: our tool (method, procedure, way-of-life, industry and regional promotion etc) existed well before the word ’marketing’ was ’invented’. This is one (smaller) point why we are not ’in’ – we look old-fashioned.
Second: agreeing to many similarities with Direct Sales (Mr. Kulchawik, look, here you and I do not say marketing but we say sales) – because of many aspects which immediately call for sales process content (problem and product specification etc) we are no media in fact (however we have many features which perform like that) but we are actually the ACTION. And we use, integrate many other tools of marketing, communication. But, we are different: we are an Institution – yet we have to compete with all marcomm tools, and sales tools like Internet.
But: as we have not only corporate customers (both on exhibitor and visitor, attendee sides) but with more and more importantly, emotionally effectively at the individual, public participants sides we need to make our tradeshows an EXPERIENCE – a place, environment, occasion to enjoy, to spend the time (and of course, spend some money).
It is essential that we develop strong and recurring relations into universities (at the roots) – lecturers and students. Each of us have many students around – hosts, hostesses, stewards etc – why do not we communicate with, involve them, too? Second: I think it is also essential that we (the exhibition industry) come to a more ‘scientific’ level, more theoretics, in many fields we can be more close to result-oriented approach e.g. in behaviour research, other areas of psychology.
Karoly NAGY
CENTREX
I fully agree with Karoly’s comments, exhibitions were always here, we didn’t feel that we have to prove our role and importance.
I believe, we have today, new opportunity to integrate live marketing platforms (what we already have, i.e. our events)with digital platforms and new medias, and become the best place for the people looking for new trends, ideas, innovations, new markets or business partners.
We have to think about creating a new business models,combining our events,new media and the way of doing business today – online, mobile, on the move, fast.
Are we ready for this challenge, maybe UFI Focus Meeting on Social Media in Paris, April 30, will be good place for one brainstorming on the topic, I strongly believe we are.
See you in Paris.