I was at the ad:tech show this week. Good buzz and vibe – clearly, dollars are flowing back into the online ad market. When we go to these shows we get good tips on what’s working and what’s tired in displays. This is an image driven show – lots of splash, iconic logos (think Google, Facebook, Linkedin, etc) and branding.

It got me thinking – what makes a great graphic? Is it content? Is it color? Image? Typeface? The answer obviously depends on your company and its identity. If you’re lucky and everyone knows your company, the name alone (writ large) will do. But if your company is not so well known, what do you use to get the attendees interested?

Sue me for the unscientific nature of this survey, but specific information comes in a distant 3rd to image and color when it comes to attracting attention. We are visual before we are contextual. We respond to vivid colors, exciting, unusual or attractive imagery. I saw a lot of displays that not only had great imagery, but incorporated the imagery into the design of their display. For example, Plenty of Fish (www.plentyoffish.com) had a cool flowing oceanic theme on a 10×20 serpentine pop up display. It was very compelling for a basic display. And it had (pretty much) zero product/service information. Which made me walk up and ask “what exactly do you folks do?”

This is not to say you should not have informationally rich graphics – in some situations these graphics work best. But think about the attendee – what are they likely to be attracted by? How informed and knowledgeable are they? Can you make them more informed by putting information on a graphic? Or do you need a visually stimulating image to create an interaction. In general, I find companies working too hard to “make the sale” before the attendee is in the booth, which is just not going to be effective.

In order of preference, this is what I think get’s attention:

1. Color

2. Simplicity (of image)

3. Size

4. Action or connotation of action

5. Information

Try it out for your company – think about what you want to use to bring people in to ask “what do you folks do?”

Impact Displays offers a broad range of Trade show graphics and display solutions to make people want to work with your company.

Impact Displays sells trade show displays and graphics to work in any budget. We have compiled a list of tips to make your trade show a success – please contact us to receive our complimentary guide to exhibiting.

Ok, so NBER says we’re not yet out of the woods – we’re still in a recession. That feels right to us – many of our customers are still cautious about committing or over-committing to their next show. We get it (boy do we). And as a value-oriented exhibit house we know how to do it for less but we’re always interested in learning and implementing best practices to economize.

So it was with great interest that we read the February 2010 Exhibitor magazine profile of one Doreen Paquette, the event and trade show coordinator of Wacker Chemical Corp. It seems Ms. Paquette recently was able to slice 46% – $57,000 from her 20 x 30 space. Forget whether you typically use a space this large (or small) or whether your budget is even as large as her savings. Who wouldn’t want to know how to save 46% and still attend the show, right? We sure wanted to know.

So we devoured the article. Ran our own calculations. To be clear, Doreen Paquette is a very, very resourceful person (who also, incidentally, knows the value of being at a show versus the cost of not attending). But I’ll give you the punchline you weren’t expecting: the vast majority of the savings were related to show services, not display costs.

Now, for a truly accurate accounting we should impute costs to the display assets Wacker owns but didn’t bring when it downsized – the article doesn’t detail this so we can only guess. But the list of display-related savings amounted to more than $40,000 and 80% of these cost reductions – more than $32,000 – came from service charges, rather than display costs: shipping, drayage and I&D. You have to stop and think what all that money goes for – this is a 600 square foot space. That’s a space big enough to park 2-3 cars in. But it’s not like they’re actually building a garage – they display will be gone in 5 days.

It’s a great story – and a big shout out to Doreen for persevering. Management should applaud her. But in the back of their minds, the executives at Wacker – and every other large exhibitor – should be asking themselves “how long has that been going on?” And why does it cost more money to bring my display the 100 feet from outside the hall to the booth than it does to bring it 2,000 miles from my headquarters to the hall?

The message is simple – with hard work and good planning you can avoid giving your budget to the show services group for driving forklifts and operating screwdrivers. You can spend it on getting visibility with customers and moving your business forward. That’s a lesson we can all use right now!

Impact Displays offers a range of trade show display and graphics solutions that will drive your face to face investment returns through the roof. (And with all that extra business you won’t even care about buying a new roof!). We have compiled a list of tips to make your trade show a success – please contact us to receive our complimentary guide to exhibiting.

We go to a lot of shows – sometimes we’re working directly with a customer and sometimes were trolling for the latest, the best, the worst, etc. We never leave the show floor without seeing something that makes us scratch our heads.

What often surprises us is not why companies went so “over the top” but why they invested so little. Obviously, we design and sell displays for a living, so we come at the business of recommendations with a certain bias. But we’re straight-shooters and we steer clients away from excess – there are many display investments we have advised against making, even thought they would have driven revenues for us. But a potetially worse strategy is to dramatically under-invest in your display. You can’t assume that just because your company has rented space and will be present that you’ve maximized the return on your investment.

We’ve all seen these booths – maybe you’ve been one of the companies that did this (no offense intended). They have a folding table, a tablecloth, a pipe-and-drape set up and a few forlorn graphics taped or pinned to the drape. You have to be honest – no one will be impressed by the stature of your company or its apparent stability with this type of booth. It won’t matter if you have a radically better product or service – the odds are strongly against anyone at the show stopping at your booth to find out.

Trade shows are about looking the part – marketing at or above your place in the market. So if you’re going to attend – and there are a lot of direct and indirect costs if you decide to go at all – you absolutely must look the part. You must look good. Most people react negatively when they see a company that’s skimping on budget. They rarely give them the benefit of the doubt – it’s human nature. Successful companies “punch above their weight” in the marketing and image department. There’s real value in looking good.

Impact Displays sells trade show displays and graphics to work in any budget. We have compiled a list of tips to make your trade show a success – please contact us to receive our complimentary guide to exhibiting.