It’s time for our annual review of the Exhibitor Show in Vegas, held in March 2008. We’ll discover some new and innovative products and services for exhibitors, along with some clever exhibit displays and booth attraction ideas.
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Booth Design Elements
- Last year, we featured some of the innovative earth-friendly products from Eco-Systems. This year they were back with even more innovations, including graphics printed on panels made from recycled soda bottles.
- Who says your flooring has to be boring? Wise Industries showed their wild side with zebra-print flooring. And carpet isn’t just for floors. They displayed some of their other carpet samples as butterfly cutouts mounted on a pillar.
- For a cool mix of nature and retro-chic, Expotechnik showed off their design skills using a conference area that featured leather and metal chairs combined with a white bamboo fence.
- Want a touchscreen kiosk in your booth, but don’t want that “techie” look? The one used by Image Work Communications was definitely creative!
- You might not think of your booth staff as a design element, but the ladies of Softspace did. Each day they dressed in one of the colors of their booth: orange on Day 1, green on Day 2, and blue on Day 3.
Clever Theme & Attraction Examples
- Want a tasty way to attract traffic? Crepes a Latte is a themed catering company with an outgoing staff that gathers and works the crowd.
- And speaking of food … MG Design built their theme around “The Idea Kitchen,” starting with their pre-show mailer, which looked like a refrigerator and included a scratch & sniff sample. Thanks to a team effort with the Creative Cooking School of Las Vegas, there were tasty demonstrations in the booth and a VIP event on Tuesday evening.
- Okay, so food and the smell of food was an underlying theme for me this year! I attended a session called, “AccScent Your Exhibit,” led by Gael Hancock from UNLV, where we learned about the science of smell and how to use it to your advantage in exhibits. Then later that day on the show floor, I discovered that InstaFotos is now offering EnhanScents, which features an aroma machine and coordinated scented giveaways.
- 3D Exhibits repurposed part of their red booth from last year’s “Bling” campaign, shifting the red shag (made from cut-up t-shirts) from the wall to the floor. They also used a “Show & Tell” theme, inviting attendees to share advice or tips, which were then displayed in a video wall.
- So what would you do if you ended up stuck in a short aisle at the back of the hall, behind two tall island booths? Impact Unlimited placed a card in the reg bags that invited attendees to come to their booth “wa-a-ay in the back of the hall, next to the restrooms.” Those who made it to the booth were registered to win an iPod touch.
Giveaways & Promotions Ideas
- EventPages is a new promotional tool for exhibitors. The company will design an event-specific mini Web site (or microsite), creating an online community for attendees to interact before and after the show.
- MG Design reinforced their “Idea Kitchen” theme by handing out cards with the featured recipes on them.
- Nth Degree played up how they can help you accomplish the things on your to-do list by giving away spiral notepads. (And they were the perfect “reporter-sized” pads — that’s where I made all the notes for this episode!)
- ELITeXPO demonstrated how to truly do green giveaways by handing out miniature trees in tubes from the Arbor Day Foundation.
- George Fern Company had a very appropriate giveaway for exhibitors – a mini tool kit!
- And while everyone may be giving away USB flash drives, the latest version now comes in bracelet form. Several exhibitors were handing those out, with the added teaser of being a random winner if you were caught wearing the bracelet.
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Stop wasting money on displays that aren’t effective!
Inside this guide, you’ll discover how to avoid the most common – and not always obvious – mistakes in exhibit design. Create a multisensory experience that exceeds expectations and connects with attendees.