Brand Equity with Exhibit Design

Trade shows are an incredibly concentrated and focused selling environment. For businesses of any size, it can be one of the best ways to bring a new product, service or brand to the market. It is only one form of advertising, but trade shows offer something traditional marketing efforts cannot. They give all the decision makers in attendance an opportunity to learn about your product, compare it, handle it, and try it out in one place at one time. For that reason alone, trade show participation should be a business imperative, strategically integrated into your marketing program.

When done right, exhibit marketing, in parallel with good design, will present your product or service to decision makers in the best light, resulting in qualified lead generation, enhanced brand awareness and sales. No other form of advertising offers the opportunities to generate sales or build brand awareness as effectively as trade shows. This is evident by the increasing amount of exhibitors across all industry sectors.

According to an industry census there are over 2,300 trade shows per year in the medical and healthcare sector alone, making up approx. 23% of all business to business events. It was also concluded that medical and healthcare is one of the most stable event sectors. Another industry analysis conduct by the same organization shows that 61% of medical device companies use exhibitions to introduce a new product, with 55% using them to promote a brand image.

For those of you who are working on a new product, 74% of exhibitors considered their presence at an event to be very successful at introducing a new product. One of the very best ways to entice decision makers to visit your exhibit is to introduce a new product or introduce an update of an existing one. Give the decision maker a compelling reason to walk into your exhibit.

Selecting the right shows to attend will simplify the challenges faced with bringing your brand to the market. Most shows will provide some kind of attendance profile based on past events. This will help you determine if a show or event is aimed directly at your target audience.

If you are ready to take this step, you need to target the right show(s), plan your strategy to get the most out of your exhibiting budget. If you're developing a custom designed exhibit, give yourself about six months design and build time, depending on the size space, to work with your designer and exhibit fabricator. This allows you to digest and evaluate the design as a work-in-progress, and make more informed decisions about the designs direction and how it ties into your everyday marketing efforts.

One of the best ways to embark on a successful trade show program and/or enhance a corporate identity that will differentiate yourself from your competitor is through design. A trade show, exhibit design should be a three-dimensional extension of your company's image, marketing messages, and sales efforts.

In a typical trade show, you will have about five seconds at most to get the decision maker's attention, make a good impression, and entice him or her to walk into your exhibit. Presentation is everything! One way to control the perceptions and impressions of your company is though creative and appropriate exhibit design. Creative exhibit design will bring a brand to life! It will catch the attention of attendees, invite them into your space and create a pleasurable environment to experience a product. The longer they are in your booth space, the less time they will spend in a competitor's. The more visitors you reach, the lower it costs to reach them.

In a trade show environment, it's all about gaining attention, focusing it on your products, and influencing the purchasing decision. The first approach to gaining that attention is to display products and messages in a way that encourages people to handle, use, and compare your products as well as engage them in conversation.

The use of clean and simple architecture without a lot of clutter provides a backdrop that allows the product and message to play the leading role. As a result, visitors will have a clear and unobstructed line of sight to the product that catches their eye and draws them in. A booths structure should never over power the product!

The over all design of the structure will take into account the goals and objectives of the exhibiting company and create a booth structure conducive to those goals. It will investigate multiple ways to display a product that will be sure to present itself in the absolute best possible light. The environment as a whole, if designed well, becomes an experience in itself, creating memorable customer experiences that retain information.

At most trade shows, the mind is flooded with visual clutter, memory retention is extremely important. The best possible way to assure booth visitors remember your brand is to actually show fewer products and messages wherever possible. Strip away everything in your booth space that does not communicate the key features and benefits your products offer. It's a lot easier to remember three things than it is to remember twelve.

Keep your graphics and demonstrations simple, attractive, and to the point. They need to explain the benefits to the end-user in terms they understand and care about. The decision maker wants to know how your product will make life easier, what is better about your product than your competitors, and if your product will solve a problem they have.

Develop a good company identity and image and keep it consistent throughout all marketing functions, from business cards, letter heads, websites all the way to executive briefing centers and trade show exhibits. When brands are used consistently they build recognition. Good design will help ease some of the pressures of exhibit marketing by making sure your brand is displayed consistently with all your other marketing collateral. Within the trade show environment, brand consistency will create a mental picture in a person so they will know what to look for when seeking you out at future events. Existing marketing literature and company websites are often used to determine the look and feel of your exhibit. This will further guarantee brand consistency. If your literature or logo has yet to be designed, do that first before taking on the task designing a three-dimensional environment.

Design as a whole should be apart of your every business strategy as it communicates the passion companies have for their product or service. If a company isn't passionate about their product, why should anyone else be? Used as a strategy, design can make a small business look large, more experienced, organized and stable.

Bill Roozée is President & Creative Director of Billy Raygun Design. Since 2000, Billy Raygun has been managing brands, architecturally and graphically, within the trade show exhibit, corporate and retail environments. For more information about how design can influence your success at a trade show and build positive brand equity for your business, visit BillyRaygun.com


Billy Raygun Design, Inc.
Three-Dimensional Brand Management
www.BillyRaygun.com