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Enthusiasm with a Concept: Success through Trade Fairs

Author: Kurt Schauer

„Only the convinced convinces.“

With this sentence, Joseph Joubert, an 18th-century French moralist and essayist, perfectly encapsulates the prerequisite for a successful trade fair presence. One should not only be enthusiastic about a professional, holistic, and sophisticated trade fair concept within a small circle – this enthusiasm must be passed on. For it is certain: Only through enthusiasm can successful projects begin. This is all the more true given that, in the context of trade fair planning and presence, people from various disciplines come together to jointly create the framework for the event.

Internal Workshop for Exhibition Staff

It is crucial to involve and convince the employees who will later form the exhibition stand staff early on in the planning process. Important questions should be discussed and clear answers found in an internal workshop:

What are our goals, and how do we intend to achieve them?
Who do we want to address?
What strategy are we pursuing?
Does our trade fair presence fit into the existing communication concept?
If no concept exists: Can we develop a concept through our trade fair presence?

We are your specialists for exhibition concepts

An exhibition planning workshop should ideally be prepared and moderated by external specialists, as a company’s internal perspective often differs significantly from its external one. Development engineers, for example, tend to want to present all their achievements. This often leads to exhibition stands becoming overloaded with exhibits and cluttered, causing the actual concept to get lost in the sheer volume.

Our task is to make your brand „three-dimensionally“ tangible and easily understandable on the exhibition stand – be it through a color system, signage, marked exhibits, or intelligent icons. In doing so, we bring our understanding of space, form, and material. Naturally, different perspectives clash in this planning step. With enthusiasm and possibly the moderation by a so-called exhibition coach, the internal corporate perspective can be meaningfully complemented by an external design and communication perspective. This leads to innovative strategies and successful models for experience-oriented encounter communication that brings people together at the exhibition stand and encourages exchange.

Our experienced team will gladly support you in developing tailor-made exhibition concepts and stands and will guide you through workshops, so that nothing stands in the way of your next exhibition appearance. Our range of services also includes coaching your exhibition staff both before and during the exhibition. From the very beginning, we are available as an external contact person, take over the overall coordination, and enable your exhibition staff to fully concentrate on experience-oriented encounter communication.

Specifically: The difference at an exhibition is not only made by the Corporate Design (CD) but primarily by recognizing and utilizing the potential of the Corporate Identity (CI). An exhibition appearance gains identity and differentiation when all relevant factors – especially the stand personnel, who embody the spirit of the entire company – are taken into account.

It is clear that exhibition success requires more than enthusiasm alone. Uncontrolled, it does not lead to the goal. It is complemented by courage and discipline: courage to take new and surprising paths in communication without turning corporate communication upside down, and discipline to consistently implement the adopted concept – with the necessary perseverance and the support of an agency or an exhibition coach.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression

Indeed, especially at a trade fair, there is no second chance to make a good first impression – a thought aptly conveyed by the well-known advertising slogan for Head & Shoulders anti-dandruff shampoo from the 1980s. Therefore, it is crucial to pay careful attention to how this first impression is created. A trade fair appearance is significantly shaped by the staff at the stand. If they do not appear competent, friendly, and approachable, even the best exhibition stand presentation is useless, and the chance for a good first impression is lost.

Five tips from the KAOS advertising agency’s trade fair coach for good trade fair staff:

Make the right selection: Take sufficient time to check the qualifications of your employees at all levels. This includes not only professional know-how, but also sociability, strong communication skills, politeness, friendliness, stress resistance, quick comprehension, and high motivation.
Appoint a stand manager: Within the team, appoint a stand manager who will be responsible for the stand and its appearance throughout the entire trade fair – ideally in close coordination with the trade fair coach.
Create a work and process plan: Establish a detailed timetable for the exhibition stand and clearly distribute tasks among team members. This prevents boredom or uncertainty about what needs to be done and when.
Ensure clear task distribution: Define the tasks at the exhibition stand precisely and record them in writing so that they are accessible to all employees at all times. Checklists can be helpful here to ensure that all tasks are completed.
Train your employees with enthusiasm: Your employees must know exactly what the goal of the trade fair is and what the company wants to achieve. Whether it’s about cultivating existing customers or acquiring new customers by presenting new products – everyone should have sufficient knowledge about the company, corporate identity, products, and new product developments. In addition, basic etiquette rules should be clarified, from politeness and uniform clothing to the proper handling of empty coffee cups.

A useful addition: helpful and always functional tools at the stand are a conversation guide and a small trade fair etiquette guide that summarizes the „do’s and don’ts“ during, before, and after the strenuous trade fair hours.

If you can't measure it, you can't manage it

„What you cannot measure, you cannot manage,“ wrote American economist Robert S. Kaplan in his 1996 book „Balanced Scorecard.“ This wisdom should play a central role in every advertising and marketing concept – especially in the exhibition industry. Why undertake the efforts of careful budget and exhibition planning, as well as exhibition organization, if success cannot subsequently be measured? Therefore, despite all the enthusiasm for good conversations, exciting inquiries, and interesting offers, the following steps must be observed:

Cost/Benefit Check and Invoice Controlling: These steps should show whether the effort was truly worthwhile.
Evaluation of Visitor Registration: The visitor data professionally collected during the exhibition must be evaluated.
Maintaining New Contacts in the CRM: Newly acquired contacts should be entered into the company’s database (CRM) and maintained there.
Writing a Final Report: This report should later be presented to all involved parties – ideally with the same enthusiasm that supported the project from the beginning.

What began with enthusiasm thus becomes a successful „Call to Action“ through a convincing exhibition concept, sophisticated advertising media, and smart giveaways – especially with early involvement of exhibition staff and support from an exhibition coach. It is therefore high time to prepare for the next exhibition.