THE 24,000-SQUARE-FOOT

Sony PlayStation “experience” at last year's ECTS trade show in London had everyone talking. The multizone space, which was visited by 24,000 attendees over four days, included a main stage featuring pop singers and dance performances, a demonstration of a new PlayStation racing game where users could talk one-on-one with Formula One racing star David Coulthard, and a basketball court where celebrity hoop pros helped to boost the profile of PlayStation's interactive basketball games.

Sony had the answer: Nothing makes for a more brand-building, sales-boosting, press-impressing exhibit than an impressive event.

“We're seeing more close work between marcom people and trade show people,” says Bill Callejas, president of MICE iCom, New York, which designed the event. That's a far cry from a few years ago, when exhibition divisions typically thought about trade shows in terms of, as Callejas puts it, “How much business can I write? How many brochures can I give out? How many attendees' badges can I swipe?”

Trade shows are now considered to be things that “actually define for a critical audience what the company is about,” he says.

With the financial outlay required to produce such high-energy exhibit events, clients are looking to get the most out of their investments. MICE does so by offering scalability. The company designed the PlayStation presence as a traveling show, which moved to more than 15 European cities after its London launch, transforming into a consumer- rather than a trade-based event in many locations. MICE also is focusing on ROI with such services as database integration, which allows clients to maximize their audience strategies, and software to manage customer relations, which lets clients track event attendees over time.

“With those clients for whom there is a much longer sell cycle, this has become much more important,” he says.

Auto Bond

London-based Imagination Ltd. has seen the production of live exhibition-related events go far in fostering successful relationships with its automotive clients. One example is the 25-year association the communications company has sustained with Ford Motor Co.

Most recently, Imagination unveiled Ford's event-style stand at the press launch for the Birmingham Motor Show, held in May in Birmingham, England, designed to promote a marketing association between Ford and Universal Pictures, which was gearing up for the release of the film Thunderbirds in July. In more than 22,000 square feet of space, the company installed a 2,500-square-foot lagoon and sandy beach designed to evoke the film set, and a nearly 50-foot-long model of a Ford Thunderbird 2. Another event requisite — the exclusive upper-level VIP area — also was part of the experience.

“Once the theme and association [between Ford and Universal] were announced, the buzz around the media was immense, and created a huge amount of free publicity,” says group account director Chris Marsh. Then, the live event drew people in at the trade show. Such events succeed, he contends, by “giving the client two hits for one investment.”

Street Scene

By going the off-the-floor route, another European marketing company, Wuppertal, Germany — based Max.Sense Live Marketing, gave automotive client Audi AG a chance to expand its horizons in an effort to build media hype around Audi's new Le Mans sports car.

Held on a public street outside the Messe Frankfurt exhibition center in Frankfurt, Germany, in association with Audi's presence at the 2003 Frankfurt Motor Show, the Max.Sense — designed event started press tongues wagging with its closure of a city street for a full 45 minutes. With 1,000 media members in attendance, car racing demonstrations and displays of rare and historic race cars attracted further attention, while “the casual meeting setting, with a ‘pit stop’ atmosphere next to the race cars, served wonderfully to generate contacts,” says Ulrich Wuensch, Max.Sense general manager.

Noting that on its own, “a stand at an exhibition is a static affair,” Wuensch estimates that 80 percent of his clients decide to stage some kind of live event in conjunction with their trade show presence. To help them gauge the effectiveness of such events, Max.Sense has developed its own proprietary ROI measurement tool, “max.result,” which measures standard indicators such as audience numbers, contacts established, and duration of stay. In addition, Wuensch explains, max.result helps clients to measure less quantifiable factors in assessing an event's overall branding effect — an area that the company calls ROE, return on emotion, experience, and engagement.

Natasha Garber is a contributing editor for Special Events magazine, CMI's sister publication.

Small Events, Big Impact

Alexandria, Va. — based event and communications giant PGI has created an entire division devoted to “in conjunction with” events — from off-site receptions to intimate dine-arounds — to enhance trade show exhibit efforts. Benny Harrell, group vice president of PGI's two-year-old New Orleans — based ICW events division, says recognizing such events as a “distinct vertical market” has allowed his ggroup to cater to the specific logistical requirements of trade show clients.

Once exhibitors become regular ICW clients, “We learn culture, what works and what doesn't work, so we're not reinventing the wheel from year to year,” Harrell says. While some of the events ICW plans are splashy, like a party to promote a company merger for client Securitas at the American Society for Industrial Security show in New Orleans, others are much smaller, like dinner in the private room of an exclusive restaurant near the convention center. The goal is still the same — for the sales and marketing staff to have “direct contact for a number of hours with their best clients or clients they're trying to reach,” says Harrell.