Secret agent Angus MacGyver had a knack for repurposing everyday objects to solve dangerous challenges.  Aided by his trusty Swiss Army knife, duct tape, and whatever materials he could lay his hands on, MacGuyver could defuse a bomb, get out of a trap, or create a diversion.     

Fortunately, you don’t need MacGyver’s resourcefulness to invent new ways to use a trade show display.  

Trade show displays make a big visual impact and create an inviting environment so you can get attention and create a temporary work space.  They have appealing structures, large format graphics, and are designed to set up easily.  Those positive attributes have value in many places off the trade show floor as well.  

Here are 20 inventive places trade show displays can add pizzazz and marketing workspace outside a trade show hall:    

1. Road shows
2. Recruiting and job fairs
3. Sales presentations
4. Hospitality events
5. Company lobbies
6. Mall marketing


Trade show exhibit used at a mall to support a fundraiser.

7. Traveling museum exhibitions
8. Buyer hosted events
9. New product launches
10. Charity events
11. Television sets
    

    Display used in an outdoor event and as a set backdrop

12. Seminars
13. Outdoor events
14. Anniversary events
15. Branded office interiors
16. Conference rooms
17. Show rooms
18. Corporate events
    

    Displays used for a traveling road show

19. Press Conferences
20. Sales Meetings 

 

You can stretch your trade show display investment by adding impact and memorability to these 20 events outside of trade shows.  Or, by scheduling your display in those uses in the future, it may help you to justify getting a new display now.  Or perhaps a job as a clever secret agent.  

What other creative uses have you come up with for your trade show display?  Share it with us in the comment box below.  No duct tape required!    

Many of these 20 display uses are for special events.  To help yours succeed, get your free copy of The Event Marketing Idea Kit, 58-pages containing 15 articles on a range of topics along with checklists and worksheets to help with the logistics of putting on an event.  Click here to get your copy.

At your last few trade shows you’ve felt a nagging feeling that something was not quite right in your booth, before you realized it was the booth itself.  While your booth once was acceptable, it’s just not doing its job anymore.  But why?

Perhaps one or more of these 15 reasons will give voice to your growing frustration:

1.  Your current trade show display is worn out
An old exhibit held together with duct tape and bailing wire, plus scarred with dents, scratches, kinks and stains doesn’t favorably represent your organization and its reputation.  A battered booth deters potential visitors, and might make your booth staffers want to wear paper bags over their heads.

2.  You have a new marketing message
Whether it’s from a recent rebranding, a hot new product to launch, or a new vertical market you are entering, your trade show exhibit no longer matches how your corporate image is portrayed on your website or marketing collateral.  In the name of integrated marketing, you’ve got some booth buying to do.

3.  You need a bigger trade show booth
You want to make a bigger impression and have a bigger footprint to harvest more opportunity.  You need more room for meetings, demos, presentations, and storage.  So you want to test out a wider inline or a larger island trade show exhibit, either renting the extra components to add to what you already own, or starting over completely.

4.  You need a smaller trade show display
Your budget is more limited than it once was, and so you want to exhibit in smaller spaces to also lower your operating costs.  Or, you’ve decided to go to a higher number of smaller shows instead of fewer larger shows, and need a new smaller booth that will still let you look like a leader.

5.  You need another trade show exhibit for international shows
Your company is reaching out to overseas markets to benefit from their larger share of global GDP and faster projected growth rates.  Rather than ship your exhibit overseas and back, you want a dedicated trade exhibit (perhaps called a stand or a kiosk) stored “over there.”  (Want help with international exhibiting?  Click here for a 24-page white paper.)

6.  You are doing more shows than one display can handle
As you find more good shows to exhibit at, some are either scheduled at the same time as an established show in your schedule, or too close to allow time for shipping and set up.  Consider two design levels of displays, to match different levels of trade shows.  Also consider exhibit rental.

7.  You need a second portable trade show display for your dealers or field sales
Your field offices or dealers keep asking you to send out a display for their local events.  It’s great they want to promote your company and products, and they are even willing to pay for the booth space and staff the booth.  Give them a durable, easy to set up display with graphics consistent with your approved marketing messages.

8.  You are new to exhibiting and need your first trade show exhibit
You’ve started a new company and want to make a splash introducing yourself and your new product at a trade show.  Or your company has been around a while, but you want to finally tap into the marketing power of trade shows to meet many, many prospects face- to-face in a short amount of time.  Your first exhibit may be a rental.

9.  Your shipping company lost your trade show display
People make mistakes, even people who work at shipping companies.  So when your display goes astray, your shipping company will step up to pay for your replacement.  No one said you have to get the exact same display.  You can update the look, message, functionality, and get what you really want now.

10.  You saw an exhibit you REALLY liked at a trade show
It was love at first sight.  You loved its color, lines, and shape.  You loved how it quickly grabbed your attention, and invited you in for a closer look.  Now you want to chuck your current dull exhibit in the trash, because you now know what is truly possible.  Ah, amour.

11.  Your company was in a merger or acquisition
Your company has bought, been bought, or merged with another company.  You may have been both exhibiting at the same shows, but now you need to exhibit together in one, presumably larger exhibit.  Your new exhibit has the balancing act of reflecting the new position of this new, third company, created by the combination of the previous two.

12.  Your current trade show display no longer fits your needs
Over the last several years your exhibiting strategy has changed, and so have the activities you hold in your booth.  Perhaps you are no longer giving presentations, even though your booth has space for that.  Or you want to hold more private meetings, but your booth is wide open.  For whatever reason, you need a new exhibit that work with you, not against you.

13.  Your current trade show exhibit is too hard to set up
You bought your last booth strictly for pizzazz, but the only sparks you get are from your field sales people every time they have to set it up.  Or you bought a monumental traditional custom exhibit, but the 5-figure I&D bill every show has wreaked havoc on your budget.  You now crave a booth that is easier, and cheaper, to set up.

14.  Your current trade show exhibit is too heavy
Your portable display is actually too heavy to carry, so you’d prefer a back wall made of three banner stands.  Or, perhaps you’ve got an island exhibit like the exhibitor we just met, who recently bought a $250,000 traditional custom exhibit, only to shelve it after one show because its shipping, drayage and I&D bills were so high.  Now you want custom modular exhibits that give a similar look but weigh 60% less, plus significantly lower your carbon footprint.

15.  Your existing trade show exhibit isn’t flexible enough
You don’t always get the same-sized booth space, but your current exhibit really only fits well in one booth size.  You’d rather be able to use just one library of exhibit components for multiple booth sizes, and be able to easily change out graphics for different divisions, vertical markets, or products.

If you’ve been able to defer purchasing a new trade show display for a long time and conserve your cash, good for you.  But if multiple items on this list have hit home, perhaps it’s time to look into how a new exhibit can help you enhance your corporate image, better achieve your marketing goals, and lower your operating costs.

Click here to ask for the Skyline Inline Exhibits Brochure, which has 43 examples of inline exhibits, from eye-catching, easy to set up, durable portable displays, to more architecturally sophisticated structural modular exhibits that give you the leadership look you require.

Click here to request the Skyline Island Exhibits Brochure and see how Skyline has provided the highest level of support, design, and results for exhibitors like you. See examples of great designs, reduced cost of ownership, reconfigurability, and exhibit rental solutions.

Click here to request the Skyline Tabletop Display Brochure. You’ll see the features and benefits of our 5 tabletop display systems, from pop-ups to banner stands to panel systems and more. Whether you need one tabletop display or a fleet of a hundred, Skyline tabletops are attractive, durable, and easy to set up.

How durable should a trade show display be?  Well, how durable do you want it to be?

In a fun way to demonstrate how durable our Mirage pop-up trade show display is, we ran a truck over it, and then set it up without a hitch.  That’s because Mirage’s composite frame withstands abuse no other display can take.  We also ran over a competitive aluminum trade show display frame, which crumpled by comparison.

Watch the movie and see for yourself:

A few weeks ago Skyline gladly hosted the Upper Midwest Exhibit Designers and Producers Association chapter meeting, here at our main facility in Minnesota.

About 60 industry professionals were treated dinner and not just one, but two excellent presentations about the state of the exhibition industry.  The newly-elected EDPA President John Rose presented highlights from the 2009 EDPA Economic Survey, which showed how exhibit builders fared in 2008.  (Most made money.  2009 will be a more interesting survey.)

The second presenter, Mark Kuehl of EXHIBITOR Media Group, shared the as-yet-unpublished EXHIBITOR Magazine’s 2010 Economic Outlook Survey. The goal of EXHIBITOR’s survey was to “quantify trends in corporate spending on trade shows for the coming year.”  Which for our audience meant, do exhibitors feel safe enough to resume spending on trade shows, or not?

The survey will be published in EXHIBITOR’s March 2010 issue, but we got enough of a sneak peek to share a key insight with you. 

EXHIBITOR used a common format for many questions, asking survey takers if they planned to spend more, the same, or less on an item in 2010.  Most people answered “the same” to these questions – it was the gap in percent between those who answered “increase” versus “decrease” that gives a clue to what the year will bring.

Do exhibitors want lighter weight exhibits?

The biggest “Aha!” for me (I might have even dropped my dessert spoon) was that exhibitors are ready to spend more on trade show exhibits than before, and that they will buy lighter weight exhibits.  Here’s how I came to that conclusion:

When asked what their expected spending would be for exhibit shipping, only 5.5% said they would increase, while 33% said they would decrease spending.  With 5.5% minus 33%, that’s a negative 27.5% gap indicating less planned spending on shipping.

But when asked what their expected spending would be for exhibits/displays, 17% said they would increase, while 22.1% said they would decrease spending.  With 17% minus 22.1%, that’s about a negative 5% gap indicating slightly less planned spending on exhibits/displays.  (Their actual behavior during 2009 was much more towards “decrease” – so this feels like an improvement!)

How do exhibitors plan to nearly maintain spending on exhibits and displays, but spend that much less on shipping?  I think it’s because they intend to buy lighter weight exhibits and displays that will lower their shipping costs.

Do you agree?  And what do you plan to do?  Let me know in the comments box below. 

Learn more about the shift towards lighter exhibits in the 20-page White Paper, The Trend to Custom Modular Exhibits.  By Tradeshow Week Magazine, including a survey of 170 exhibitors on their preferences, plans, and challenges.   Click here now to get your copy.

10 foot trade show displays come in two big categories.  Which is right for you?

What’s the first thing you should decide about your 10 foot trade show display?  Is it the message?  The images?  The colors?  Nope.  While worthwhile questions, it’s not time for them yet.

The first thing to decide is whether you should get a portable trade show display, or a modular inline exhibit.  (You could also get a traditional custom exhibit, but for a 10 foot display that’s like getting a sledgehammer to put in a carpet tack).

Portable 10 foot trade show displays offer easier and cheaper transport and set up.

Portable 10 foot trade show displays Most exhibitors favor portable 10 foot trade show displays.  They like how it helps them get in and out of the show hall easier, sets up fast, packs small, and keeps their costs down.  And especially when you have different staffers setting up your display (without training!) at shows all around the country, it really helps to make it as fool-proof to set up as possible.  These are all good benefits and help explain the success of portable 10 foot trade show displays.

Modular 10 foot trade show displays Yet there are some exhibitors willing to pay double or even triple the cost of a portable to purchase their display, even though it will still be used in the same basic 10 foot by 10 foot space.   They also will be paying more for their exhibit at every show, because it costs more to transport and set up.   Why?

Modular 10 foot trade show displays offer greater sophistication and branding power for marketing-driven exhibitors

In a word, marketing.  They want an exhibit that will propel their brand to the top.  They value their brand image and the opportunity of their trade show audience even more than the benefits of portability offered by a banner stand or a pop-up display.   They want a more upscale, elegant design for hosting their valuable prospects.  They are willing to let someone else set up the exhibit, because they’re at the show to generate big business.

This is a new idea to some exhibitors who hadn’t yet considered getting a modular 10 foot trade show display.  They only saw the value of getting in and out of the show fast, and saving lots of money on shipping, drayage, and set up.  But once they see the marketing advantages of modular 10 foot trade show displays, they open up to the possibilities.  Perhaps they could look better than the average exhibitor?  Wouldn’t it be better to look like the leader?

For the person first considering modular 10 foot trade show displays, it’s worth reiterating that the modular exhibit they are infatuated with does come with greater operating costs.  If you plan to do 20 shows a year, are you willing to pay that greater shipping and drayage bill?  Are you willing to either set it up yourself, or even pay someone else to set it up for you?  If the answer is still yes, then make the leap up to a more sophisticated marketing image, greater booth functionality, and the opportunity to generate more leads.

Both portable and modular are good choices, you decide which is best for you Once you make that decision to go with a portable 10 foot trade show display or a modular exhibit, you can then go on to determining your message, your look, and your overall trade show exhibit design.  And whatever messages, images, and colors you pick, you’ll be adapting them to the structure of the exhibit system you’ve already chosen.

To see 43 more design ideas that will help you better understand the difference between portable and modular 10 foot trade show displays, click here to ask for your free 26-page Skyline Inline Exhibits Brochure.

Recently I posted the “10 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started In Marketing“ and was amazed at the response.  So, in that same vein, here are 10 indispensible lessons I’ve learned about trade shows that I wish I’d had known before I started exhibiting.

1.  You won’t succeed at trade shows if you just show up. A trade show first-timer may think that because they’ve paid a couple of grand to rent a 10 x 10 space for a few days, they automatically will reap the whirlwind of leads and sales from the show’s attendees.  If only.  Surprise: you’ve actually only paid for access to this great audience of buyers.  Now you have to do your part, such as train your staffers, create a promotion that attracts qualified prospects, and design your trade show display to entice the right visitors to your booth.

2.  Trade shows are not as glamorous as they looked from the outside. To the uninitiated, this is what trade show marketing looks like from the outside: Flying around the country to sunny or metropolitan locations, staying in top-tier hotels and meals on the company dime, and access to top-level company execs.  But seen from the inside, trade shows are not so glamorous.  Trade shows themselves are very hard work with a lot of stressful moments before, during, and after exhibit hours.  There are so many details to master, and so many vendors you are depending on.  You can sweat more during exhibit set-up than a month of work outs.  And while travel can be exciting, it gets old fast when you are repeatedly away from home and your family.

3.  Inertia determined much of your company’s show schedule. In the many years before you were handed the reins to your company’s trade show marketing, your company cobbled together quite a list of shows.  But are they all still worth it?  Were some trade shows chosen because your target market was there, or because your competitors were?  Has your client base evolved away from the demographics of some of the shows you exhibit at?  Have some shows eroded their attendee base by not reinvesting in strong marketing and educational content?  Are there new vertical markets that you have yet to find good shows to market to?  It’s up to you to break the inertia — and create some new momentum.

4.  Trade show labor is way more expensive than you think, and sometimes it’s even worth it. It’s a eye-opener to find out how much you will pay someone else to set up your booth, hook up your lights, or rig that hanging sign, especially if it’s on a weekend, or God forbid, on a Sunday.  The union rules in most venues require that you pay labor a wage that adds up in a hurry, even if they don’t.  You can minimize labor costs by getting easier to set up trade show displays, trying to schedule your set up for straight-time labor, and by lining up dependable contractors.  I’ve found some Exhibitor Appointed Contractors are worth it, as they work hard to earn you business, show after show.

5.  You will blow your trade show budget if you don’t plan well. You can never plan too far ahead, especially for overseas shows.  Your budget was likely set with the best-case scenario for your trade show expenses, without room to pay for late fees and rush charges.  That’s powerful incentive to quickly master the show book.  Fortunately, after several shows you learn what you really need to order (electrical, leads machine, carpet) and what form pages you will likely skip (plumbing, signage, security).  A pad of Post-It Notes or a good electronic scheduling software helps you flag your most pressing deadlines.

6.  Everybody wants to help you pick the trade show exhibit color.  No one wants to help you track the leads. When it comes to exhibit design, everyone has an opinion.  And in the time leading up to the show, they will all clamor to offer their ideas, making it harder to get the booth built on time without rush charges.  Yet after the show, you will have a harder time getting similar participation in tracking the leads from the show – ostensibly the reason you designed your exhibit in the first place.  Remind your colleagues that if you can’t prove the results from this year’s show, you won’t be exhibiting at the show next year.

7.  The 10 minutes after the show closes is when most damage happens to your trade show exhibit. The show ends with a voice booming over the loudspeakers saying, “The show is closed, see you next year.” But to impatient booth staffers, it’s as if they had actually shouted, “Drivers, start your engines!”  Booth staffers hurry to win the race to the taxi stand, hotel, bar, restaurant, or parking lot.  And if you have a portable trade show display that your booth staffers pack up, this is when they break it, by shoving it in its case as fast as they can.  Close that expensive window of time by getting a more durable display, getting better packaging, or just by having a frank conversation with your staffers before the closing bell.  Or, if you’re the one who wants to win the race, take a deep breath and slow down before you make a costly mistake.

8.  Drayage is the most expensive way to move your exhibit the shortest distance. As a trade show newbie, one of the biggest surprises is that you have to pay to have your exhibit moved from the shipping dock to your booth space.  Even more shocking is just how much you’ll have to pay — about the same to move something across a convention center as it does to ship it across country.  Drayage rates have risen by double-digit percentages in some of the last few years, probably because more exhibitors switched to lighter weight trade show booths like Skyline’s.  To offset the lower weight of exhibit properties, drayage charges per pound have increased.  If your exhibit is still made the old-fashioned way, it’s a double-whammy.

9.  It’s hard for booth staffers to take their very first lead at a trade show. In our lives we go though various, potentially scary rites of passage: learning to ride a bike, going to your first day of school, asking for a date to the prom.  While all of these have been immortalized in film, no movie has yet to bring to the silver screen the epic tale of a first-time booth staffer engaging and writing up their first trade show lead.  What would yours have been, a horror film?  A comedy?  A tragedy?  Whatever kind of movie it would be, it would also be a drama, because it’s you’re likely filled with nervous energy as you go out and ask a perfect stranger face to face if they’d like to do business with your company.  Just remember that your booth visitors actually paid to visit the show, and many are shopping for solutions to their problems that your products can solve.  Practice the process of engage, qualify, present, and close, and you’ll be more comfortable taking your first lead.

10.  Trade shows can be addictive. With the hard work, long hours, and time away from home, some people can’t wait to return from their trade show.  But for others, trade shows are a calling.  They get jazzed by the performance aspect, the blitz of direct client contact, and the relationships built before and during the show.  They like the ability to create a successful marketing program in a medium built upon the value of face-to-face interactions.  And that’s when trade shows really become addictive: when you master the medium and drive serious revenue to your company’s bottom line.

I hope that if you’re an experienced exhibitor that you’ve been nodding in agreement as you read this, and that you share this with your newer trade show marketing staff.  What important lessons of your own would you add as #11?  Please add them in the comments box below.

Note:  I wrote a sequel post you can also read, 10 MORE Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Exhibiting At Trade Shows.

Learn what other exhibitors are doing now to create their own trade show success, with the 32-page white paper research report, What’s Working In Exhibiting.  Get your free copy now by clicking here.

Where do you look for trade show display ideas for your next display design?  How about places where extra effort has been applied to make designs that stand out quickly.  Here are 5 places to try for ideas and inspiration:

Trade Shows   Gee, what a novel idea, look for trade show display ideas at a trade show!   You’ll be there anyhow, right?   At minimum you’ll look very closely at your competitors’ trade show booths to see how they differ or match your own marketing messages.   Now, take that heightened scrutiny and apply it to non-competitors as well.  If you can, walk the show before it opens, guessing which designs will pull in the most people.  Then come back during show hours to see if you were right — and see which booths actually do pull in the crowds.  Then try to discern why they were so successful.  Even better: walk a show outside your industry, so you can see how completely different exhibitors design their displays.     

Billboards   Billboards are best when designed to quickly communicate a single message, with big, bold images, and not much text.  Walking by 10-foot trade show displays at 3 miles per hour is similar to driving by a billboard at 60 miles per hour, because you only have a few seconds to get the message.  If your boss wants to overload your trade show display design,  take them for a drive, and ask them to count the words on the billboards that get their attention.  If you’re lucky, they’ll get an “aha!” moment, and you’ll have a new ally in making a more simple and effective display design.   And you can ask your boss to pay for lunch.

A Mall  While billboards can inspire inline exhibit ideas, retail stores provide inspiration for island trade show exhibits.  Walk a mall and see how individual stores within the mall have designed the signage to get you in.  Once inside ask yourself, how have they designed their space to handle traffic flow?  Identifying departments (just as you would identify divisions)?  Product merchandising?  Even look at color choices, suface materials, and how their staffers engage and talk with you.   Treat yourself to some new shoes while you’re there.

Magazines   Although magazines are made for reading at a more leisurely pace, ads within magazines are made to get your attention fast.  Look for ads that have engaging, simple designs.  What imagery did they use?  How did they handle the headline?  Is most of the text big?  And look beyond the ads, to the page layouts of the articles themselves.  Designers often create a more billboard-like first-page spread for longer articles, especially for the cover story.  Check out the typography, the color combinations, photos and illustrations, and textured backgrounds.  Once you start looking at magazines this way, you may forget to actually read them!

Online   With just a few clicks you can search for trade show exhibits and harness a bounty of images online.  It’s a quick way to look at lots of exhibits without leaving your desk.  To help your online search, we’ve photographed thousands of our client’s trade show exhibits, and put 450 of our best in our trade show display photo library, searchable by size and vertical market.  We’ve also put over 1,200 high-end renderings in our trade show exhibit design portfolio.  Just remember that online images tend to be small, two-dimensional, and lower resolution, while real exhibits are larger and meant to be experienced at a human scale.   Online is a good place to get ideas, but there ain’t nothing like the real thing.

This week Skyline Exhibits introduced Envoy™, a new modular exhibit system.  And while we’ve been excited about all the new products we’ve introduced this year, we are really excited about Envoy.

The movie below shows the design influences for Envoy’s development, and how those influences evolved into our new product.

You can see more about Envoy here.

Banner stands have become more popular because they can create a high-impact 10 foot trade show display with greater portability, ease of set up, and flexibility than pop up displays.

Banner stands can be found up and down most aisles at every trade show, becoming as common, perhaps even more common, than the ubiquitous pop up display.  Here are 5 reasons why banner stands have become so popular:

1.  Three banner stands make a lighter, more portable 10-foot booth Originally banner stands were used only as a single unit, presenting a graphic about 8 feet tall and 3 feet wide.  It gave exhibitors a very portable graphic they could put almost anywhere.   Need a show-specific message as an add-on to your 10-foot display?  Slap it on a banner stand.   But then exhibitors figured out they could fill their entire 10-foot trade show booth with 3 banner stands that still weighed less and took less space and effort to carry.  I’ve even seen 9 banner stands used in a row to make a 30 foot backwall.

2.  Bolder, more durable graphics It used to be that to get sharp-looking banner stand graphics, you had to get a laminated print that either curled or was easily damaged.   But with the recent improvements in fabric graphics, exhibitors can now get a bold, sharp graphic that also is much more durable.

3.  Even easier set up With some training or experience you can learn to set up a pop up display in 10 to 15 minutes, which used to be considered a blink of the eye in trade show time.  But now the bar is set much higher. Three banner stands take only a few minutes to set up, and are much less complicated, with many fewer parts.  Retractable banner stands are almost as easy as pulling down a shade, only from the ground up!

4. Greater flexibility With some planning and good design, you can design three banner stands to be used together, and then still use one of the three by itself.  You can even design the banner stand graphic to allow its use as a tabletop display, by only pulling the graphic half way out of the housing.  And with some banner stands (like Skyline’s), you can very easily change the graphic out for a new message.

5. More uses beyond trade shows People who exhibit at trade shows have other marketing responsibilities, and they soon found many other uses for these lighter, more portable banner stands.  Because they set up in a flash to put a large format graphic message wherever desired, banner stands make a memorable impact at special events, meetings, lobbies, showrooms, seminars, conferences, and more.

Lighter, faster, and more flexible banner stands have changed the expectations of what a portable display should be, and where to use it.  While 3 banner stands in a row lack the curved pop-up’s seamless backwall and illusion of mass, for many exhibitors the 5 advantages outlined above make up for it, and then some.

The Skyline Banner Stand 3000R Exchange allows users to change out the graphic in a banner stand without an internal cartridge.  Watch how easy it is to update your graphics for a new product, new division, new message, or a new look.

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