Category: Innovation

The basic exhibition model has existed relatively unchanged for many, many years. While the technology and community development surrounding events has changed out of all recognition since the Bedouins parked their caravans alongside one another in the desert, the eternal model of supply and demand has not. The host announces a location where buyers can meet with sellers; the sellers pay the host, turn up early and arrange their products attractively in nice surroundings; whereupon buyers arrive to buy products or services, largely based on the sellers’ proposition and pitch to the marketplace.

However, there are those who have sought to alter the profile of trade shows and exhibitions, not in terms of specialisation of the industry, but in the approach we take to producing an event for any given market.

For example, it might not be entirely justified to say EasyFairs is – like European airline EasyJet – the low-cost carrier of the trade show world, but it is tempting to make the comparison. The minimal, cookie-cutter approach and low-cost, low-margin business model boosted by premium services for an extra price certainly bears a resemblance to low-cost carriers.

Fundamentally, the company removes the need for elaborate stand design, meaning a lower entry cost for exhibitors and a more level playing field. One booth is the same as another, only the company identification and the staff stood inside it are different.

As former EasyFairs CEO Jean-François Quentin explains, the model serves the consumer – in this case the exhibitor – with their basic needs. They need the audience and they want a platform to reach them:

“The customer focus is fundamental. I think the success of any big company in this sector has to be customer-centricity and I think we sometimes forget that.” 

The shows EasyFairs looks for are exactly the kind other organisers might seek to offload. Big national shows wherein exhibitors have large stands come at great expense. Sometimes exhibitors just decide that the benefit is no longer worth the cost of competing. As the markets have slowed or declined, there is less need for these big, all-singing-all-dancing national shows, instead, demand for sales-focused trade shows on a smaller scale, such as those EasyFairs offers, has increased.”

EasyFairs found that particularly in the industrial sector other organisers and venues were happy to pass over such shows, enabling it to breathe new life into them with its uniform stand, low-cost model.

“And in the smaller countries Easyfairs’s formula has been well received, but to make it work in bigger countries it needed to develop regional rather than national shows, particularly in more specialist markets. Small countries have been a little easier to develop in because small countries have smaller companies and many agents, while distributors don’t have a big sales force,” says Quentin.

Market conditions clearly have a huge impact on the shape and format of an exhibition, and organisers are forced to change their events in order to meet the revised requirements of the people and companies the exhibition serves.

In the Netherlands in 2010, amid the contraction of the global auto sector, Amsterdam RAI was determined not to see its motor show go the way of others (such as the recently collapsed 2010 London International Motor Show). AutoRAI, held in April, typically attracted between 350,000 and 450,000 visitors to the largest consumer event in the country. The Netherlands has a population of 16.5 million people and no car manufacturers; the opportunity to gather the world’s carmakers under one roof once every two years had led to the creation of a national institution.

However, this time around the event organiser’s office started taking calls from manufacturers explaining that budget cuts meant that they would be unable to afford their stand for the 2010 event. The MD of RAI Exhibitions, Ids Boersma, realised that the car manufacturers were looking to pull out of the show, and sure enough BMW became the first to confirm it would not be participating. Other manufacturers began to follow suit and the future of AutoRAI fell into doubt. This was four months prior to the show. The floor plans were ready, the organiser had sent out all the material. Boersma decided it was time for direct and dramatic action: was it possible to do a low-cost participation event and if so, would it be worth it?

Car brands spent around €1m (US$1.13) on average to take a stand at AutoRAI (which was not even among the world’s leading motor shows). The least an exhibitor spent even then was half a million, with others spending as much as €3m for the nine days the show usually runs. Boersma agreed with the gathered manufacturers when they said this cost was simply too much: “We told them we could create an event for just nine per cent of the cost and the vast majority said they were interested.” At the moment he said that, he didn’t have a clue how to do it, only that he needed to conduct a client survey immediately. 

“We sold no square metres to exhibitors any more, they were just allowed to bring their cars,” he explains. “Companies were not allowed to make their own stands; instead we created what the customer says ‘they wanted most’ – ‘worlds’, environments where they could put their cars, such as cabriolets, family and luxury cars. No more grandstands.”

The result was that more cars were featured than at any previous show – a lot more. Vehicle numbers rose to 550 from 370 in 2007. The show also incorporated a motorcycle event and lots of entertainment, delivered at newly built theatres and pavilions. Of course this entertainment, a core element of consumer exhibitions, came at a price. In fact, costs rose beyond the promised nine per cent, with exhibitors instead paying 20 per cent, but still, the average cost came down from €1m to €200,000.

Seventy per cent of the manufacturers turned up, and the show attracted  220,000 visitors. This figure, although lower than hoped, was not entirely unexpected. The number of visitors at a car show correlates directly to car sales, and car sales had plummeted in the preceding months (one major Dutch car importer actually went into bankruptcy as the show was being built). In addition, car firms normally generate a lot of publicity for the motor show through their own marketing; due to budget restrictions this was no longer the case.

However, despite the low turnout and reduced exhibitor range, the event defied expectations; the number of leads that the manufacturers took was equal to 2007, at just 20 per cent of the cost. When the dust settled, Boersma saw that the RAI had taken an exhibition on the verge of collapse and turned it into a successful show. He heard several explanations for the high number of leads. Fewer visitors meant fewer distractions, and there were more cars so more choice. But ultimately he believes that the absence of expensive, elaborate stands was key: “If you build a castle, people won’t step into it. This was an exhibition of low-key presentations, there were no thresholds so visitors could just walk into each set very easily.

“The MD of Porsche told me that when you build castles, people hide away. Here there was no escape for the sales people, no room for them to sit down, so they were dealing with visitors every day,” observes Boersma.

Of course the cost-cutting was not without its innocent victims. Exhibitors saved money on stand building, but in an effort to reduce costs further the organiser chose not to run the event across the Easter weekend. Easter is expensive for exhibitors because they have to pay the staff twice as much, but it also had an impact on visiting families. “We also skipped – and I think this was the worst mistake we made – the evenings. We stopped at 7pm where in the past we went on until 10pm,” says Boersma. “Ultimately it all had to do with downsizing the cost, this was our only gospel.”

So after all this did the show break even? No, but it came close and it kept it alive for another year. Boersma, however, had taken a tried and tested format and revised it in three months, making a saving of 80 per cent for exhibitors and delivering a show that generated as many leads as the full-strength 2007 exhibition.

“In the exhibition industry we are not used to transformation. A change in exhibitions is normally done gradually, because not all exhibitors have the same objectives. Only in a crisis do you do it all at once. I once met the chairman of an association and he told me ‘I know exactly what my members want.’ A thousand members, and yet he said to me ‘I know exactly what my members want.’ So I asked him, ‘What do they want?’

“‘They all want something different,’ he told me. This is what we have to deal with in the exhibitions business.”

It is, however, simplistic to say that such deviation from the norm can be progressive. At both EasyFairs and AutoRai, the organisers actually make their profit on the premium spenders. EasyFairs’ bolt-ons, like EasyJet’s early boarding or in-flight purchases, are where the company is able to please its stakeholders. 

When Apple pulled out of the Macworld expo after the 2009 edition, the organiser, IDG World Expo, was left struggling to retain the event’s premier position as the most important live event for Apple enthusiasts. It subsequently announced plans for a new-look version of the exhibition based around the increasing intersection of Apple technology and creative arts.

Apple, meanwhile, went on to pull out of all third-party exhibitions including the E3 gaming expo. Its withdrawal from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas was followed in time by Microsoft, which took its cue from Apple and went on to launch its own event. The market for products was large enough that they felt they did not need to fight for the limelight with other exhibitors in the same arena.

It was seemingly quite common in the first decade of the 21st century to do so. Cisco is another company that launched its own event, which was attended by 17,000 people, a figure that dwarfed many other specialist exhibitions in the sector displaying a broad field of exhibitors. 

And then of course there are those who believed that they could do away with the stands altogether. Former CEO of UBM, David Levin, worked at Cisco before entering the exhibition industry. Shortly after joining UBM, in 2005, his concern was what type and size of event would be vulnerable to digitisation.

“We had a big initiative that has run through this period. We made a decision not to run our own software – we found other people to do that for us – and trialled that extensively. A couple of things that came out of this. The best news was that to the core big shows, it was not a threat. But it provided great engagement with people before the show, allowing them to make the most of the show, improving ROI; just making it a facet of the show.”

Then there are the niches that work. UBM has an outplacement fair for military personnel being made redundant to meet potential employers. Levin claims this was a natural fit because British military personnel are scattered all over the world and the employers they want to meet are in the UK; the show was successful, with more than a hundred – virtual – booths occupied by paying exhibitors.

“A booth is an information point in the show, one that makes you feel like you’re in the show. You click and talk to someone in the booth,” he explains. Where Levin ventures into more contentious territory is when he claims visitors can attain an experience that is similar to that which they would have with a physical event. “The feeling, when people go to these, is the feeling of going to an event. It’s not wall-bound and it’s not time-bound. The event stays online for a month afterwards. It’s live and staffed, but if you come afterwards, it’s like coming to an exhibition centre when the lights are still on, but all the people are gone.”

Whether it’s a show for one company, a hall full of corporate marketing or devoid of it, or an event created entirely from pixels, there is an exhibition format for every visitor. In years to come there will be many more.

As Michela O’Connor Abrams, the founder of the Dwell on Design show in Los Angeles, says, quality design is no longer an option if events are to remain viable in the future. The design of an exhibition itself is a determining factor in the success of a show:

“Good event design promotes one-to-one connection, the be-all, end-all reason to exhibit or attend.”

With that in mind then, how do modern exhibition directors know when, and how, to change the design of their exhibitions? When is the right time to make the change and, in doing so, what risks are they running? Innovation in the exhibition industry is commonplace, but for any individual organiser to succeed they must ensure that their business is ready to evolve. Underlying the new exhibition design solutions we are seeing, is a wider need to innovate an industry that has existed fundamentally unchanged for years. And yet while neither the Internet, video-conferencing, social media nor apps look likely to bring about the end of the events business, advances in technology have transformed the business to such an extent that – for those who have managed to keep pace – it is unrecognisable compared to only 20 years ago. A parallel may duly be drawn with the fate of print media. The majority of those people who read this book probably won’t feel the paper of this page in their hands, such are the diminishing profits of the medium, but savvy publishers will continue to prosper. 

According to JWC’s Anna Holzner and Eyal Knoll, an organiser should first consider each show in the portfolio and determine, for the next two or three cycles, where does the event naturally fit? “Tactics, processes, even team members may need to change,” they explain. “What made the show successful in the past is not necessarily what will sustain it well into the future.

“Management needs to set clear internal thresholds (such as decline in visitor/exhibitor ratio, customer satisfaction trends, renewal rates, year-on-year key account retention, etc.) which provide a realistic view of a show’s health.” The focus, they observe, should be on determining the directional changes to be implemented. A particular show might be a good candidate for diversification, or “splitting into specialist, niche events or formats with a different, more specified focus.”

Because let’s not forget, focus is an incredibly powerful thing. Place a 100-watt bulb in a large hall and allow the rays of light to radiate and you’ll struggle to illuminate a thing. Place those same rays in parallel and you can burn a hole through steel. The power of focus is clear; apply this same logic to illuminating a market, or an industry, and you’ll see the far more effective proposition that a specialised trade fair or other such event can be.

Some organisers achieve this focus through acquisition. However, M&A activity is highly visible to the markets it affects, most notably to the competition that a company is seeking to outmanoeuvre. 

Clearly, the innovation challenge is to successfully create (or at least be part of) a new show or one that covers new or nascent markets. But sometimes the shift away from the traditional exhibitions that we know is so fast and radical that capabilities and expertise in the new and emerging field must be developed very quickly or even hired.

David Worlock goes so far as to say that people attending our events may soon do so in a capacity of their choosing, represented online by ‘avatars’, virtual instances of themselves, conceived in accordance with their corporate mission or personal preference. Already when we Tweet, for example, we do so from behind one of many masks we create for ourselves; as ‘marketing manager for Company X’, ‘humorous industry observer’ or as ‘target-focused sales account manager’. 

“People will appear as they wish themselves to be, and our interaction with others will become a part of the record,” says Worlock. Perhaps there’s sense in this, but most of my friends would prefer not to buy from the man in the digital mask.

One of the worries with the next generation is to what extent they are actually interested in the physical get-together at all.

It is, of course, an unsubstantiated fear.

The physical get-together of people is not, and never will be, the sole domain of older generations. However, it is telling that companies soon began using their information and communications technology committees to make sure that company policies were not solely being made by executives who may not be quite so in touch with ‘the kids’ as they need to be.

The industry was acutely aware by the end of the first decade of the 21st century that making changes to incorporate this new world was the obligation of every event director, and the war against the online threat was not a finite battle to be won. This new world had to be embraced and incorporated in all events – the future of the industry looked like it would depend on it. In short, the dismissal of the online threat as something that could be ‘seen off’ was not accepted by progressive exhibition organisers.

The act of continuously rebuilding their businesses became a global challenge for organisers, and at the heart of it all was the need to find better ways to engage their participants, both exhibitors and visitors. The problem remained, however, that many organisers were coming nowhere near to taking full advantage of the business opportunities that data afforded them. 

“In order to engage with them more effectively, we need to understand them better,” says UFI MD Paul Woodward. “In this we are lucky: one of the main assets of our industry is data. A number of CEOs to whom I spoke about this sheepishly concede that they should have a strategic plan for this, but don’t.”

To better engage our participants, and to avoid the fate of traditional trade media, many newspapers and even the main TV channels, organisers realised they would need to reinvent the look and feel of many of their events, and that this could be crucial in making them attractive to the next generation.

Fortunately, it turns out there are many, many, ways to appeal to a new audience with events, and a thousand ways to integrate a community’s interests into the event using both live presentations and digital content. As Nat Wong of Reed Exhibitions Greater China, once pointed out: “Change must be gradual … but there must be change.” Generation Y will almost certainly want to meet with their peers at events, but not events that look and feel like the ones their grandparents attended. 

Organiser initiative aside, the arrival of the digital age also changed the way in which people chose to consume their trade shows. The shift from simply acquiring information to being educated required exhibition organisers to make a far greater leap than many had thought necessary. The digital revolution in the global exhibition industry let loose a driving change in the world of events that concerned the type of interaction events offer to participants – potential vendors on one hand, and potential buyers on the other.  Although particularly relevant to consumer events, this change came in the form of a shift in the exchange model from one of promoting information to one of promoting relationships and experience.

A golden rule of advertising communication is that the message gets across only if the recipient receives something. For example, people read advertisements because they provide information, or because they are amusing. Trade fairs, according to Francesca Golfetto and Diego Rinallo from the Centre for Research on Markets and the Industrial Sector (CERMES), offer the traditional model of promotion–information exchange. While visitors receive and accept the exhibitors’ promotion, they also receive information by comparing the varieties and features of supply in a certain market. This kind of model has characterised trade shows since the early, general, trade fairs, which buyers attended to gather information about the latest developments in products and technologies. 

However, this promotion–information exchange model has gone the way of advertising and has entered a state of crisis, according to Golfetto and Rinallo. Consumer show organisers and exhibitors figured out that fairs, as live events, have the ability – through direct engagement with participants – to move from showcases into engaging exhibitions, where visitors become participants, placing themselves in active relationships with products and participants. Few still attend events to find out what’s new in the marketplace – that is what the Internet is for. Engagement is key. “The stories told by visitors reveal how a new perspective on organic food or taking care of one’s body is reinforced by interaction with other individuals at the stands of suppliers, or the motivating satisfaction of having tried out and talked about a motorcycle with a champion,” says Rinallo. 

“On the other hand, most of the exhibitors at consumer shows have leveraged these trends and increased their demand for experiential stands where the relationship between visitors and products, more than information about products, is crucial,” says Golfetto. “Or they have opted to emphasise the interaction of visitors with others who share their passion, and the perception of a general atmosphere, over a relationship with the supplier.”

In the case of trade exhibitions, this process was relatively late getting going. None the less, from surveys taken at the top international trade fairs, it became clear that the motivations of visitors to have information prior to purchase was marginal. At European trade fairs, visitors are driven primarily by the need to understand where the industry is going, to search for new ideas, and to ensure the choices that they make for the future are appropriate. “Visitors do not form new ideas through imitation of the things they’ve seen,” says Rinallo. “The ideas come from intellectual stimulation, sensation, perception of the market climate, contact with trends taken to extremes, and from interaction with and perceptions of the behaviour of others. Visitors bask in the atmosphere that surrounds the events, fuelling phenomena like off-site events.”

Businesses and cities are well aware of these phenomena, and often respond by organising spaces and opportunities for interaction; and not just commercially oriented activities – recreational and cultural events that enhance the fair experience for participants are crucial. “That’s how it went, for example, in Berlin, back in the day, when visitors from the fashion world went in search [outside the ‘official’ show venues] for the perspectives of taste and traditions of a Europe that was expanding,” comments Golfetto.

The same thing happens today at the furnishing, workspace and lighting fair Salone del Mobile in Milan where the ‘Fuori Salone’, or off-site events, have become a notable fixture. These attract professionals and young people with a passion for design who are looking for inspiration and ideas for new products by participating in the rites and rituals of their community. “And by observing the behaviour of the most sophisticated consumers – the Italians, of course,” Rinallo points out.

The need to experience things expressed by visitors – or ‘participants’ as Rinallo and Golfetto rightly proclaim them to be – is a huge factor in the changing format and content of marketing events, both individual and collective. Ultimately, the driver of experiential activities is inexorably prompting creativity on the part of event organisers, be they individual or collective. In Rinallo’s words, if an exhibition is to be memorable, the experience certainly needs to be different from last time.

In order for these requirements to be met, the show must itself be revised. And in today’s changing marketplace we’re seeing a great deal of evidence that this is indeed happening. 

The period 1980 to 2010 may have been defined by several trends, but none was more threatening to the industry or as complicated to overcome, than the arrival of the Internet.

When the first two connections of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (Arpanet) were joined between Leonard Kleinrock’s Network Measurement Center and Douglas Engelbart’s NLS system in California on 29 October 1969, neither man knew what a monster they’d created. 

It wasn’t until the mid-Nineties that the network, known today as the Internet, really made an impact on popular culture. Today we take it for granted, and it is undeniably one of mankind’s greatest inventions; it has ushered in a new age of communication and knowledge exchange, cementing a period in human history that scholars are already referring to as The Information Age. The Internet has even changed the way humans learn and retain information. The accessibility it provides often means that we now need only know where to find the information we need, rather than the information itself. We are permanently connected to those we wish to know, and contactable by those we don’t. Our lives have been changed irrevocably.

The seismic shift created by the arrival of remote networking and content sharing was, understandably, of great concern to an industry that based its existence on the accepted convention that face-to-face was the pre-eminent way to do business. 

It’s probably fair to say that the exhibition industry was slow to react to the advent of the online age. Because of its very nature, a community that is built around the need for face-to-face interaction saw little benefit in investing in something so seemingly detached and nebulous as online communication.

However, the specific threats the online world presented to the exhibition industry were simple to comprehend. Websites gave companies permanent shop front for their products, one that transcended international borders and, to a certain extent, language. Online product catalogues reduced the need that exists in many industries to attend an exhibition simply to peruse a company’s product offering, and new channels for interaction via email and social media lessened the need for an annual meet-up; conversations were now running throughout the year.  

But if the leading lights of the exhibition industry know one thing, it’s enterprise. Companies such as UBM soon confirmed that they were entering the ‘virtual event’ marketplace, opting to pump millions into the concept of online marketplaces occupied by virtual stands and online versions of ourselves, with visitors selectively visiting and interacting with virtual exhibitors.

In a deal with virtual-event technology provider InXpo, UBM set about holding more than 30 virtual events in 2009, a number that tripled to 100 by 2010.  “We will provide leadership in the emerging ‘virtual business’ space,” said MD of UBM Studios, Kate Spellman. “Virtual business is the harbinger of a new era that will transform the Internet from a collection of pages to a series of engaging destinations.”  

The company also took a pioneering step by breathing life into the dormant figure of Comdex, a one-time successful Las Vegas information technology show that had been cancelled in 2003. At its peak, Comdex boasted 2,300 IT industry exhibitors and 200,000 visitors, and courtesy of the reduced costs and appropriate market profile, it was to return to the exhibition calendar in November 2010, but now as a completely virtual event. 

And return it did. Nearly 5,000 people attended the event over the course of the two days, making it then the largest independent virtual trade show in the IT industry. More than 100 speakers were listed, as users gathered online for 50 sessions on the event’s key topic – New Business Solutions: Embracing Disruptive Technologies & Changing Delivery Models. These sessions took place in a virtual exhibition hall with 30 exhibitors; big names including IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Symantec, Panasonic and D&H were present. Elsewhere, visitors could check in for educational sessions.

However, despite plans for another Comdex in 2011, the idea was a failure. Today the Comdex virtual website takes you to a page of links that features the very real and enduringly physical, Las Vegas-based information technology trade show Interop. The virtual experience was giving neither the attendees nor the exhibitors what they wanted. 

According to Andrew Reed, MD of exhibitions and events at UK organiser William Reed, virtual events are just that – ‘virtually’ an event, definitively not an actual event. It is a crucial distinction. The idea that virtual trade show halls could be built online and inhabited by exhibitors and visitors in the form of online avatars seemed perfectly viable, but in reality – where business is done – it was not to be.  

It soon became clear that virtual exhibitions were not going to subvert the industry in quite the way that the prophets had foretold. They would no more supplant real-world events than football video games would replace football matches. Instead we were seeing a shift, whereby a physical exhibition could logically develop a virtual element, rather than – as was the case with UBM’s ill-fated Comdex – become an entirely online entity. 

The desire for personal interaction when doing business is not a phenomenon limited to the world of exhibitions. When you look back at forecasts of the way businesses were supposed to be operating today, you’ll find many widely accepted predictions that simply never came to be. The past is littered with false futures: the paperless office, the peopleless city, a world of people sitting alone in living rooms, connected to each other by a screen, personal jet packs and skycars – none of it happened. Ever-more impressive technology, improved connectivity and virtually instant access to information do not appear to have lessened the need for getting out to trade shows.

Theoretical physicist and co-founder of string field theory, Dr Michio Kaku, summarises the principle need for personal human interaction in an elegant and pragmatic way. The University of New York’s professor of theoretical physics and author of New York Times bestsellers Physics of the Future and Physics of the Impossible (the latter also a 12-part series on the Science channel in the US), says basic human instinct is the reason exhibitions aren’t going to disappear anytime soon:

“These predictions never came true because we’re social animals,” he says. “We like to bond with other people. You want to see who or what is up and coming – you want to see who is lying to you. You can’t do that on a computer screen.”

Bear in mind that Kaku is a firm advocate of somewhat contentious technologies such as the contact lens through which we can access the Internet (something that began life as Google Glass in 2013) or interactive digital ‘wallpaper’ that will replace desktop PCs. But despite his love for potentially game-changing technology, he claims this scope of access will never diminish the need for live events:

“The world is headed towards something called perfect capitalism. There is so much knowledge out there. When you go to an exhibition, or a supermarket, you already know exactly what something really costs,” he explains. “Today, supply and demand are imperfect. In the future, it will be perfect: you will know exactly what things really cost, how much profit the manufacturer is getting and who offers the cheapest product. That’s what we’re headed for, a flood of knowledge and perfect capitalism.”

Despite this torrent of information, and the fact that we needn’t leave our rooms to know about every product, Kaku says organisers shouldn’t panic. Technology, he argues, can do little to diminish human instinct:

“Some people think exhibitions will disappear. That we’ll all teleconference instead, so there’s no necessity to go to any trade show. Well that’s wrong. Because we are human beings. Our personality hasn’t changed in a hundred thousand years. In fact, if you could meet somebody from that long ago who was able to speak your language, they’d immediately understand your desires and wants. You see, we haven’t changed at all.

“We want to have meetings because we want to size people up. You want to see who interacts, who is the creative engine. You want to know who comes up with good ideas rather than goofy ideas.

“This is the paradox,” he continues. “We will have more information than ever before. But when we look at a press release, our first reaction is scepticism. Because you know a lot of it is written by a professional copy-editor who gets paid to hype up inferior products. You want to see it, touch it, kick it, test drive it. You want to have direct contact with people and products.”

That simple truth is why we will always have exhibitions, he claims. “We want bonding. We want the inside story, the gossip, the scuttlebutt, the scandal. All the stuff you’re not going to get in press releases.”