What do you think? Have you ever displayed your product or service at a trade show? What was your experience like?
At HJMT, we’ve exhibited on a number of occasions. Each time, we try to do something different to create a buzz. One time, at the NYS School Board Association, we had a life size image of Albert Einstein and had Superintendents and School Board Members pose with the card board image. We snapped digital photos and sent to their email addresses. Another time, we had a spinning wheel and gave away a number of items. And one time, we even had a spelling bee! (It was funny to see the Superintendents of some of the schools actually running away from our booth in fear of spelling the word wrong!)
Today, we exhibited at the NY XPO at the Jacob Javitz Center in Manhattan. Since our new tag line is “Creating Buzz Without the Sting,” we decided to do something with bumble bees. Staff members, Stefanie Topper and Ellen Heydt were dressed as bees and handed out business cards. The business cards directed attendees to our booth to play “The Singing Bee.” At the booth, Kristie Galvani and Allie Herzog quizzed attendees. If they guessed the artist that played on Kristie’s ipod, they could be eligible to win a free Ipod Touch!
Believe it or not, many people didn’t know a lot of the famous artists like the Jackson 5, Fleetwood Mac, Madonna and even Billy Joel! When I heard Kristie giving a hint to a couple of young businessmen, “they are five brothers who sing together from a famous family,” my eyes popped open! Could people be so unaware?
As a result, we had a nice group of people visit our booth, although we did get our share of solicitors. I couldn’t believe how many people were actually pitching us for financial planning services, mortgages, staffing needs, promotional item companies (even though our banner said that we do promo items!), Mary Kay cosmetics, and people looking for work!
The expo was supposed to have more than 15,000 in attendance with hundreds of exhibitors. We ordered 3,000 business cards for the bees to hand out. If we gave out 2,000 cards it was a lot. At one point, I saw someone with five cards in his hand! “I’m sorry I think I took enough,” he said to me when I tried to hand him another card!
There were definitely not thousands of folks in attendance. If there were a few hundred it was a lot!
The other thing about the show is that the organizers randomly placed exhibitors with no care who they were putting next to who! As a matter of fact, they put HJMT next to a competitor (who we actually never heard of with supposedly 35 employees in Garden City and Manhattan). Our booth drew most of the crowd, so it really didn’t bother me.
One more interesting fact about the show…. Since they let everyone and anyone into the show, we actually saw a few homeless people walking around taking the free stuff.
So was the show a business development tool for HJMT? I’m not sure. I do know that since we had the bees walking around handing out business cards, we did get tremendous exposure and visibility for the firm. In the long run, that’s the most important thing, because visibility and exposure = new business!
My experience with these shows has been very mixed. Some I have walked away with absolutely nothing and from others I have gotten soem great ideas, new vendors and, most infrequently, new clients.
My must say though that the last show my company went to we did receive a call from a prospective new client who saw our displays and actually took the time to write down our name and number. Who’d have thunk it.