NEWS & UPDATES

August 7, 2008 In By Advent

The Changing Face of Face-to-Face Marketing

Gen­er­a­tional trends are trans­form­ing business

The experts weigh in: John Kil­metis, Phil Good­man, and John Rober­son dis­cuss the future of trade shows

The face of Amer­ica is chang­ing.  It is get­ting younger.  The mighty ranks of the Baby Boomer gen­er­a­tion are dwin­dling against the ris­ing tide of their chil­dren, the Echo Boomers, also called Gen­er­a­tion Y.   His­tor­i­cally, trade shows were the pri­mary tool used by busi­nesses for shar­ing infor­ma­tion, net­work­ing, gain­ing indus­try spe­cific edu­ca­tion, and stay­ing up-to-date.  Many exec­u­tives con­tinue to cling to this obso­lete, Pre­cam­brian vision of tradeshows and refuse to believe the world could be any­thing but flat.  The old, con­tent laden, infor­ma­tion dri­ven phi­los­o­phy is dying a painful (and painfully bor­ing) death.

Enter gen­er­a­tion Y.  Gen­er­a­tion Y includes those of us born between 1977 and 1994, are just turn­ing 30, and in seven years we will inherit the earth and con­sti­tute a major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion.   And, hold on to your seats… because these new boomers are begin­ning to take the reins and steer cor­po­ra­tions from admin­is­tra­tive and lead­er­ship roles (check out the cnn.com blog ‘young peo­ple who rock).  This chang­ing of the guard means chang­ing the way we do business.

In a recent inter­view with Smart Meet­ings mag­a­zine, Phil Good­man, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Gen­er­a­tion Tran­si­tional Mar­ket­ing, describes the dif­fer­ent psy­che dis­played by gen­er­a­tion Y.  “They like one-on-one per­sonal com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”  “They are basi­cally more opti­mistic than Gen X; they like chal­lenges.  You don′t com­mand them, you col­lab­o­rate with them.  They want a work/life bal­ance.”  He also describes Gen Y as self-inventive team mem­bers who often get bored in meet­ings (Read the Arti­cle).

As a mem­ber of the up and com­ing gen­er­a­tion I resent the con­cep­tion that Gen­er­a­tion Y “gets bored in meet­ings” and that we have some­how devolved from upright humans into hunched crea­tures sport­ing casual short sleeves and even shorter atten­tion spans.  Tak­ing advan­tage of a 20 minute lay­over in a bustling inter­na­tional air­port, I chewed on the mildly bit­ter notion.  Mean­while, I glanced up at CNN play­ing on the flat screen above me, checked the text mes­sages, voice mails, and missed calls on my Black­berry, turned on my iPod, con­nected wire­lessly on my lap­top, instant mes­saged a friend in New Zealand, and began pulling up research for an arti­cle.  And it hit me.  Maybe Phil Good­man was right.  We do inter­act with the world dif­fer­ently.  Trade Shows will have to change too.

THE OLD SCHOOL    

In his arti­cle, “Trade Show Real­ity: ‘This is This,′” fea­tured in Moti­va­tional Strate­gies mag­a­zine, Jim Kil­metis pines over the bygone glo­ri­ous trade show days of yore when the isles were all car­peted with golden fleece and packed with eager, party-going atten­dees who toted heavy purses and fat bud­gets that burst at the seams and over­flowed with sparkling gems.  His lamen­ta­tions include sev­eral obser­va­tions that help explain the shift­ing focus of tradeshows.  By his account, trade shows were the main source of up-to-date infor­ma­tion, the main source of con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion for a spe­cific indus­try, and an invalu­able method of rela­tion­ship build­ing.  As Kil­metis hints, this type of trade show is in its death throws.

As for the out dated notion that trade shows are the main source of up-to-date infor­ma­tion — for­get it.  A trade show maybe a good place to launch a new prod­uct, but to say that you need to fly across coun­try to hear about it is just shy of ludi­crous.  The amount of infor­ma­tion and the ease with which it can be obtained via inter­net is stag­ger­ing.  In a his­tor­i­cal con­text, there is no par­al­lel.  Many grad stu­dents never even visit a library.  I would ven­ture that given a com­puter, an inter­net con­nec­tion, and five min­utes most 12 year olds could find some­thing as inane and obscure as an up-to-date pop­u­la­tion esti­mate of Tim­buktu, Mali.  It should not be a prob­lem then, find­ing specs on the new iPhone or Toy­ota Prius. Today there is a vastly expan­sive sea of con­tin­u­ously updated con­tent that exists, quite lit­er­ally, at our fingertips.

There is more damn­ing news for trade shows.  The days of cheap travel have “van­ished like a fart in the wind” (Shaw­shank Redemp­tion).  Soar­ing gas prices do not equal hap­pily soar­ing jets.  “Jet fuel prices have changed the whole busi­ness model, so we don′t have any his­tory to draw on here,” said Joe Schwi­eter­man, a Trans­porta­tion expert at DePaul Uni­ver­sity.  A report by CNNMoney.com reports that many air­lines are fac­ing bank­ruptcy (read the arti­cle).  And with bank­ruptcy loom­ing dark on the hori­zon, air­lines are look­ing for ways to pass those costs on to the cus­tomers.  Amer­i­can Air­lines and United Air­lines have both imple­mented extra sur­charges for pre­vi­ously free ser­vices like checked bag­gage.  South­west had hoped to make it through 2008 with­out sig­nif­i­cant price increases but has been forced to con­cede to the mount­ing pres­sure of ris­ing fuel costs (read the arti­cle).  Schwi­eter­man con­cludes that, “at some point, air travel will just have to be 20% more expen­sive.”  What does all this mean for trade shows?  The costs of rock­et­ing fuel prices will cut deeply into already tight­en­ing travel budgets.

What about Kil­metis′ asser­tion that trade shows are an invalu­able method of rela­tion­ship build­ing?  He points out, “Today′s younger gen­er­a­tion is far more com­fort­able build­ing rela­tion­ships through e-mail, instant mes­sag­ing, text mes­sag­ing, face­book, etc, etc, etc.”  Our net­works are increas­ingly being bound by the invis­i­ble chords of cyber­space and cell phone fre­quen­cies.  Face-to-face is fac­ing steep competion.

The prog­no­sis for trade shows seems dire at first glance.  Vital signs are fail­ing and the old pre­scrip­tions don′t work.  The rem­edy is not more of the same.  Com­pa­nies must adapt to sur­vive.  How­ever, the new face of trade shows is not bad news: its just new news.  And new news is fan­tas­tic news for com­pa­nies look­ing to repo­si­tion them­selves at the pin­na­cle of their industry.

THE NEW NEWS   

Peo­ple don′t need to go to trade shows for updated infor­ma­tion.  True.  Thank­fully though, there is a big ‘but.′  The ‘but′ is that com­pa­nies still need to an excit­ing way to release infor­ma­tion.  An inter­net release of a PFD file is about as sexy as kiss­ing your grandma.  Post­ing the specs on the impos­ing 6,262 cc V12 Fer­rari FXXis well and good, espe­cially for ana­lyt­i­cal engi­neer­ing types.  But the major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion is not aroused or emo­tion­ally engaged by num­bers.  Instead, they are turned on by the FXX′s cherry paint, deep con­tours, smooth curves, and the gut­tural growl that revs into an 8,500 rpm scream.  Though tech­no­log­i­cally enthralled as the echo boomers may be, first hand expe­ri­ence of a prod­uct con­fers knowl­edge and under­stand­ing that tran­scends fac­tual data.  This expe­ri­en­tial advan­tage is denied web­sites and afforded to trade shows and other indus­try spe­cific events.  It is irreplaceable.

Ris­ing travel costs and tight­en­ing bud­gets does not mean you should stop mar­ket­ing (“Mar­ket­ing in a Slow Econ­omy”).  If fuel is a resource in short sup­ply, then effi­ciency is a bound­less renew­able resource.  In Buzzmar­ket­ing, author Mark Hughes, dis­cusses the neces­sity to cre­ate ‘buzz′ around your prod­uct.  You need to do things to get peo­ple talk­ing.  He cites stud­ies that con­clude word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing is the most trusted form of adver­tis­ing in our mar­ket­ing sat­u­rated soci­ety.  Even bet­ter news is that word-of-mouth can be achieved for free.  Live events like trade shows offer a face-to-face high-impact touch point to begin a rip­ple effect that can spread far beyond the ini­tial con­tact.  A study by the Event Mar­ket­ing Insti­tute describes 3 zones of influ­ence cre­ated by events:

• Attendee Zone: it includes vis­i­tors, view­ers, engagers, and leads.
• Influ­ence Zone: it includes peo­ple who heard about the event sec­ond hand and is, on aver­age, 4 times the num­ber of the Attendee Zone.
• Viral Zone: it includes all peo­ple touched by word-of-mouth, web, and viral influ­ence and is 10 times larger than the Influ­ence Zone.

Focus on spread­ing the impact of your event far beyond the event itself to achieve max­i­mum mar­ket­ing effi­ciency and make up for ris­ing costs.  If atten­dance at a trade show is low, it does not nec­es­sar­ily fol­low that the num­ber of peo­ple touched by the trade show is also low.

David Clay­ton has been a crit­i­cal observer and stu­dent of social net­work­ing behav­ior of the Echo Boomers′ col­le­giate lives as they move on towards the pro­fes­sional world.  He is Direc­tor of Cam­pus Min­istries at Lip­scomb Uni­ver­sity and has offered some insights into broad the effects of vir­tual net­work­ing.  “It has changed the way we build rela­tion­ships.”  But has it changed for the better?

“Our fas­ci­na­tion with tech­nol­ogy has actu­ally brought us to the point where we are trad­ing in real rela­tion­ships for arti­fi­cial ones. I remem­ber walk­ing into one of our dorms this year and there were 15 guys in the com­puter lab, every­one of them chat­ting with some­one on Face­book, yet no one was speak­ing to each other… We have traded in what is real for that which is not.”

This is why states that Gen­er­a­tion Y is “the loneli­est gen­er­a­tion.”  There exists a dearth of inti­macy.  Bank­ing, work, chat­ting, and even dat­ing can all be done online.  And if you didn′t mind order­ing in every­day, you would never even have to leave your cave.  But as in the Plato′s alle­gory of the cave (The Repub­licbk. VII, 516b-c) offers some hope for mar­ket­ing events.  Once some­one has entered the light of day, he will not want to return to the dark illu­sion­ary world of a cave in which every­one has cre­ated their own real­i­ties.  Devel­op­ing face-to-face per­sonal busi­ness rela­tion­ships at trade shows lends a sense of inti­macy, trust, and emo­tional con­nec­tion not offered by detached vir­tual relationships.

THE VISION

John Rober­son, pres­i­dent of Advent, a mar­ket­ing firm based in Nashville, Ten­nessee reveals his vision for the new trade show model that main­tains focus on the unpar­ralelled effec­tive­ness of face-to-face.  A staffed trade show exhibit used to exist by itself as a per­fectly sound mar­ket­ing strat­egy.  “The tra­di­tional trade show model is too pas­sive,” states Rober­son.  “You have so many ways to get con­nected.”  Rober­son advises that rather than view­ing the inter­net and tech­nol­ogy as an enemy, instead we need to embrace that tech­nol­ogy and aggres­sively tar­get Gen­er­a­tion Y.  Tech­nol­ogy and vir­tual com­mu­ni­ca­tion can be used in con­junc­tion with tra­di­tional face-to-face approaches to cre­ate a seam­less harmony.

“The event has become ‘the mid­dle.′  It is only a part of an over­all strat­egy,” states Rober­son.  Pre-show touch points should include emails, texts, and blogs in addi­tion to tra­di­tional mail­ers.  The oft neglected post-show fol­low ups are a vital com­po­nent of max­i­miz­ing your ROI.  Videos, pic­tures, and pro­mos from the event can all be sent via email and all make mem­o­rable impres­sions on the attendees.

Regard­less of the advan­tages of get­ting vir­tu­ally con­nected, Rober­son is clear: “Its all about face-to-face.”  The event or the trade show itself is the crown­ing cap­stone of the over­all strat­egy.  “Face-to-face mar­ket­ing is the most effec­tive form of mar­ket­ing out there,” says Rober­son.  Don′t believe him?  A study released by UCLA states that an aston­ish­ing 93 per­cent of com­mu­ni­ca­tion effec­tive­ness is deter­mined by non-verbal cues (read the About.com arti­cle).  That means that any­time you text, email, or instant mes­sage you are los­ing a dev­as­tat­ing 93 per­cent of your effec­tive­ness.  That face-to-face inter­ac­tion is what will stir the emo­tions and loy­alty of your audi­ence.  It is the same tool that will increase the effec­tive­ness of your event and spread the impact far beyond that ini­tial contact.

An arti­cle on by Paul Gillan of Exhibitor Online com­pli­ments Roberson′s phi­los­o­phy.  He writes, “Blogs and pod­casts won′t detract from or com­pete with your events.  In fact, these online jug­ger­nauts can give your mar­ket­ing efforts a seri­ous cyber boost — at lit­tle or no cost to you.” (Read the arti­cle.)  He dis­cusses how O′Reilly Media posted con­tent from their Emerg­ing Tech­nol­ogy con­fer­ence.  Detrac­tors com­plained that atten­dance and ticket sales would suf­fer.  But event mar­keters rejoice!  Low and behold, the oppo­site was true.  Actual atten­dance rose sig­nif­i­cantly and over­all expo­sure to the event grew expo­nen­tially due to the internet′s mas­sive vir­tual audience.

The trade show is not dead.  Face-to-face mar­ket­ing remains the paragon of effi­cacy.  But it must change in order to ful­fill the needs of a new gen­er­a­tion.  There is an encroach­ing wave of short atten­tion spanned, tech lov­ing Echo Boomers sweep­ing towards the busi­ness world.  In order for event mar­ket­ing and trade shows to sur­vive these new con­di­tions, they can­not duck-dive under the wave.  It is not a pass­ing fad.  Instead, mar­keters must drop head­long into the curl and ride it all the way in.

For more infor­ma­tion on tradeshows and expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing, visit our blog at www.adventresults.com.

Authored By Advent

Advent partners with organizations to help them visually express differentiation.