We’re called upon by clients to create media presentations for trade shows and large venue events. One of the biggest mistakes I see with media use at trade shows is lack of consideration for the venue, booth location and booth size / layout. And most importantly, what exactly is the video designed to do? A trade show requires a lot of thought and consideration to ensure your media is being used effectively rather than just “we need a video for our booth.”
The Venue.
Let’s start here because this is the actually THE most important thing to consider. If this is a trade show, you’re probably in a convention hall or possibly a large hotel ballroom. The larger the space, generally the more overall background noise in the room. The larger spaces also tend to “suck up the sound” so what sounds like a nice volume back in your offices is barely audible in the cavernous space. So unless you have a small “theater” space to isolate your audience and sound, passerby are not going to hear your audio well unless you play it at an annoyingly loud level. And that’s not going to stop anyone, they’ll just avoid your booth altogether.
Lighting is generally terrible at trade shows, either too dark or too bright. Will you build a roof or put any sort of fabric coating over your booth to control the lighting? Not necessary but something that needs to be taken into consideration when designing your media for the show. Lights reflect off screens and they can wash out dark elements in the media making them appear milky rather than sharp.
How big is your booth / space? If you’re a “big player” in the space with a large booth expecting heavy foot traffic, your media message could get lost in the space. 40″ and 50″ displays look plenty large in offices but can look like a mobile tablet in a large venue booth. Consider larger displays or multiple, strategically placed displays. If it’s a smaller booth, we need to consider not only where will the display(s) be but also how will you support it? Display screens are heavy.
Where is your booth? Where you are on the show floor and what’s around you will impact your media presentation. Being next to a “big player” is a great thing because you are guaranteed a lot of foot traffic in your area, but also a bad thing because you could be obscured by the big player. Being in the back means we need to draw people through the room to your booth. How your booth is set up and what it faces plays so much into how your media and message are developed. You need to draw attention to yourself and the further “off the beaten path” you are, the harder it is to get people to notice you.
Oh and by the way, if your booth is along the wall, near the bathrooms, you’re in prime territory. Bathrooms obviously attract a lot of people at a show, if you’re near them, you should always use that to your advantage. Be sure you have some significant media or signage facing in that direction.
so what are we doing?
So given all that I’ve presented above, what exactly is the media designed to do? The obvious answer is to help market your product or services. The less than obvious answer is HOW do we achieve that? You’re in a noisy space with less than ideal lighting conditions, competing with a thousand or so of your best friends for the attention of the attendees.
So again, “What EXACTLY is your media designed to do?” Are we going to tell a full story or are we simply trying to stop people long enough so you can introduce yourself? That’s pretty much your two choices.
Telling a full story is possible if you have the space or a dedicated theater / presentation space to do so. Multi-screen displays can really be effective when they are used together to form a single storyline. Usually you do this visually as it’s hard to hear much in a booth. If you do have the theater space and we can create a dedicated story with full sound, keep it to 2 minutes maximum. Go beyond that and folks start to get restless. If you have a theater space you are generally going to have a live presenter as part of the presentation, so let the video set up whatever they are going to talk about.
If you have a small booth or table, well then we’re probably working with one screen. If we’re dealing with one screen, will it be fully visible at all times or will it be set up in the back of the booth with personnel standing in front of it to sell your product / services? If that’s the case, well we really can’t tell a full story on the screen because it will be continually blocked by people. So don’t go for the story telling if the screen will be partially blocked most of the time.
More often than not, you’ll be using media to both draw people to the booth and give you enough time to say hello, shake hands and pull them in to hear your pitch. This is THE most effective use of media in any trade show. Just get people to the booth, let your sales team take it from there. A good one-on-one interaction with your potential buyer is the still the best sales tool at any trade show. So think about media as a tool to bring people into your booth.
It’s very important that whatever media you create represents your company and your brand. Good media presents your brand, your colors, and incorporates your message into the presentation. “I just need a video” generally produces some haphazard ‘thing’ that might look cool but has absolutely nothing to do with your product, service or brand. That just creates confusion.
“Oh so you sell this thing?” “Um no, that’s just a super cool video we had produced, but we DO sell this other thing.” “Oh, never mind.”
What’s the point of that? A super cool video that has nothing to do with your services or products is something the video production company can use on their reel but doesn’t really help you in your trade show. We as a video production company need to listen to YOU and ensure that whatever we do, will draw your prospective buyer into your booth.
Very clean visuals, properly sized and fonted graphics, and best use of the space available will make for the most effective presentation. Huge video screens and video walls offer a lot of real estate that should be filled with stunning videography, photography, animation and can utilize both large and very small fonted graphics. Smaller screens should again have stunning imagery but the graphics fonting must be properly sized to ensure your audience can see the key words and message.
Two effective Examples
Small Tree Communications predominately sells Media Servers and High Speed Networking equipment. Not the sexiest things in the world visually; a big metal box full of hard drives or a big metal box with a whole bunch of ethernet cables coming out of it. However their products are used to create incredibly visually impactful projects by allowing media production companies to store and access massive amounts of data to create video, animation and film projects.
Location was the National Association of Broadcasters Convention in Las Vegas, one of the largest trade shows in the US in the largest convention center in the US. Their booth was only 15 x 15, halfway back their particular hall, along the left side wall, in a sea of massive booths by the “big boys.” A standard ceiling sign would be barely visible among the clutter of so many other hanging signs. Small Tree was literally going to be lost on the show floor due to their small booth size and location. Only people who were seeking out the company would be able to find the because they were off the beaten path with not much hope of “stumble upon traffic.”
Solution: Hang a flexible video screen, approx. 10 feet tall, above the booth in the shape of a cylinder. Small Tree actually came up with the idea of the screen, then it was up to us to figure out what to put up there to draw people in.
We created a 40 second video to play in a loop showcasing scenes from projects created by production companies using Small Tree products AND keep their logo up on the cylinder the entire time. Video elements included Blue Angel jets, running cheetahs, snowboarding and more. Moving and exciting action shots. All framed correctly for the tight horizontal aspect of the screen with the Logo used to cover the video seams. The video also continuously moved left to right giving the illusion that the cylinder was spinning. The video could literally be seen from just about everywhere in South Hall. It stood out even amongst all the static and spinning signage suspended from the rafters and drove foot traffic to a very out of the way booth.
High Road Craft Ice Cream is a premium ice cream brand created by chefs for chefs and foodies. Once people taste, the flavor sells itself. Incredible product that has to stand out among hundreds of other options vying for both the public and wholesaler attention. What sets the company apart is that they pretty much make every ingredient for their ice cream and many of the processes and cooking are still done by chefs, by hand. They have a full commercial kitchen that feeds out into the main ice cream factory.
Location is multiple food and retail centric trade shows throughout the United States. They don’t have a booth per-se, more like a serving stand that’s the width of their ice cream service cart and just deep enough for two people to stand and serve. So maybe 6-8 feet by 4 or 5 feet is their entire footprint at any given trade show. High Road wanted to remind buyers that they are truly the ice cream of chefs, for chefs and foodies.
Solution: We created a video presentation that emphasized the heart and soul of what goes into each batch of ice cream. The people, the cooking process and many of the fresh ingredients used in the product. Documentary style close ups and beauty shots of fresh ingredients being prepared and cooked; hand mixing ingredients into the ice cream base; the attention of the chefs to what their doing; and we added a live ice cream demonstration to show the fun behind the brand as well. Because the space is such a small footprint, we made sure to keep the High Road logo dominant at all times so the screen serves as both an enticement to stop and taste the ice cream and as a sign with their brand name.
The entire video runs approx 8 minutes cut very loosely to music with three distinct scenes. Fresh food preparation, fresh ice cream preparation, a low country boil party featuring ice cream. Because the photography is so stunning we allowed the scenes to play out longer rather than just cut quickly to music that the audience may never hear in a trade show. In order to appreciate the work that goes into a fresh product, we wanted to allow the audience time to see each shot and each scene clearly. The video turned out to be doubly effective. First it helped to entice people to stop and taste a flavor. Secondly people lingered watching the video and they tried additional flavors.
Two examples of effective use of media targeted towards specific uses and specific audiences. Both designed to attract additional buyers to the booths, yet both done in completely different styles. When planning media for your next trade show, give it some serious thought, team up with a creative team who actually listens to you and your needs and be sure to create more than just “I need a video.” [hr]
BISCARDI CREATIVE MEDIA is a full service digital media production company near Atlanta, Georgia with services that include Video Production, Sound Production, Sound Mixing, Graphic Design, Animation, Post Production, Video Editing, Color Grading, Finishing, Digital Asset Transfer, Digitizing and Archiving. Quite simply we’re the people who make video and media production easy for you. No technobabble. Just clear, concise and creative content delivered where and how you need it, on time and on budget. Office and production space is also available for short and long term projects.