Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 22, 1993 TAG: 9307220065
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
In the trade-show industry, the name of the game is getting attention. As exhibitors strut their stuff this week at the industry's own convention, it really is show business.
With thousands of companies trying to drum up business at hundreds of trade shows across the country each year, it takes some creativity to stand apart from the crowd.
Companies use trade shows, most of which are glitzy affairs closed to the public, to sell goods and services to big-volume buyers.
"We have to get them in the booth. That's the most important thing before you can show your product," said Jan Dixon, vice president of Matrix, a Nashville, Tenn.-based exhibit designer.
The Matrix booth, where conventioneers stepped aboard a ride that simulates the sensation of a race car or a motorcycle, is drawing one of the biggest crowds at the Exhibit Industry Conference and Exposition.
If your firm needs something flashier, Dixon's company will be happy to oblige - for a price. Matrix recently recreated an Italian town square, two-thirds the size of a football field, in a $5 million exhibit for the Italian Trade Commission.
"If you want to go to extremes and call it a carnival, that doesn't offend me," Dixon said. "I will stoop that low if that's what it takes. But we try to do it with class."
Other ways to draw a crowd are in abundance at this trade show of trade shows, which continues through today.
A talking bust of Benjamin Franklin can hawk your product; a model demonstrates how to unfold a huge, collapsible display case; and there's a 10-foot-high video wall with a dozen television screens forming a single picture.
There are freebies: pens, sunglasses and enough coffee cups to stock a doughnut shop.
Some prefer a low-key, yet still elaborate, method.
Contempo Design, an exhibit firm based in Libertyville, Ill., caters to more buttoned-down clients, such as AT&T and pharmaceutical maker Parke-Davis.
"You can't overshadow the product or service," said Contempo President Robert C. Shaw. "They want to present a stable image. They don't need anything wild - people know who they are."
For Parke-Davis, Contempo recently designed a streamlined two-story booth that featured a main office upstairs and individual stations downstairs for the company's various product lines.
"It's very modern, clean and antiseptic," Shaw said of the model. "It was something that doctors could feel comfortable in."
E. Jane Lorimer, president of the Denver-based Trade Show Bureau, said fancy exhibits can do only part of the job, and they won't help much if the companies don't follow the initial spark with old-fashioned salesmanship.
There may still be a place in the industry for those who simply set up tables and hands out brochures.
Gordon Mulava, national sales manager for Preferred Exhibitor Service Inc. of Mount Laurel, N.J., was doing just that.
"My theory is very Spartan," said Mulava, whose company puts up and takes down exhibits at trade shows. "If I had a girl dancing up here, more people might stop by. But that's not to say I'd get more business out of it."
by CNB