Vendors Must Think Globally, Exhibit Locally

Jun 27, 2007 2:23 PM

This disparity leads to the following questions: Why isn’t there greater participation in U.S. exhibitions? Can this situation be reversed so local engineers can be intensively exposed to the latest and greatest in technology-related products without having to travel half way around the world?

My personal opinion is that the tempered enthusiasm by exhibitors at U.S. exhibitions can only be attributed to financial reasons. The few advertising dollars available to any one company can be either spent on one or two large booths with the necessary bells and whistles or several modest booths at a larger number of conferences.

Modest booths draw little attention, because their very appearance minimizes expectations on the engineer’s side and leads to modest interest. This leads to an unfortunate chicken-and-egg situation, where well-done booths with the proper eye-catching demonstrations are very well attended but can mainly be found in a few large conferences. Meanwhile, the less impressive booths everywhere else are not very well attended, leading to the unfortunate conclusion that larger exhibitions are the place to be.

I offer one last observation. We must remember that these conferences and exhibitions, regardless of their size, are geographically local and hence attendance is dominated by engineers in the general area. In other words, if they were held in a given country, engineers from that country would be in attendance at a much higher degree than the rest of the international engineering community.

If we want to target the engineering community in the United States, we must exhibit locally and with a very strong presence. Well-done booths that are fully populated by a company’s expert technical staff and sales personnel must represent vendors. With all vendors’ experts on hand, engineers can evaluate the available options and make their choices.

Want to use this article? Click here for options!
© 2007 Penton Media, Inc.