For many companies, you, the not-so-humble tradeshow booth, are the tentpole for the year.
You set the tone for sales teams. You send a signal to customers. You set the strategy in stone—or at least on 20-foot tall fabric panels.
And yet, more often than not you’re a mess.
You’re in a room filled with all of your brand’s competitors—a strange proximity that never happens elsewhere. And yet, stepping back and squinting at an exhibit hall’s worth of booths like you, one sees a sea of sameness in color, imagery, and even messaging.
At the highest level, meaningless messaging about “empowering solutions” or “making a difference” creates more work for salespeople to explain the business’s story. This is work the brand should do—ideally in clear, concise, compelling terms—on your walls. Instead, we’re served “unlock the future.”
Your top-level messaging should draw customers to you, inspired to ask a specific question. “Tell me more about [the provocative idea your booth espouses]” is a better starting point than, “Wait, the future is locked?”
Closer up, your walls often get larded with language focused on tech specs instead of true value. Tradeshows are already overstimulating; there’s not a chance a customer walks away knowing whose widget is how many microns more precise. Here, a touch of restraint creates room for talking about customer needs.
Spatially, you’re predisposed to pack products in, creating chokepoints that drive people away instead of driving engagement.
It’s not your fault, of course. Even well-established brands lose sight of their own trees in the forest of a tradeshow, to beat a dead metaphor. Having taken their eye off what their brand stands for—or focusing on short-term gains—they festoon your walls with whatever is new, not what is enduring.
Or worse, they define themselves by their competition, a reactive stance that lacks in vision what it adds in defensiveness. They end up shouting everything, and saying very little.
In our experience, the best way to use you is as the physical embodiment of the brand’s strategy.
Your brand has a high-level strategic point of view, which should tower above all. And your brand—if it’s been crafted with the help of, ahem, experts—has messaging that speaks directly to distinct audiences. It should also have pillars that enumerate enduring points of differentiation that reside above the newest knob on the widget.
Together, these things should guide the booth experience. A brand-led booth sets a confident tone. It signals a unique perspective to customers. And it makes good use of two stories of fabric-wrapped aluminum girders to set a strategic foundation that will last long after you’re put back into shipping crates and tucked into a warehouse next to Harry Reid International Airport.
Sorry if this is a little hard on you. It’s meant as constructive criticism. After all, the best way for you to be a great tentpole for your business is to be sure there’s not a circus underneath.
