There is a driving change in the world of events that concerns the type of interaction events offer to participants – potential vendors on one hand and potential buyers on the other.
Although particularly relevant to consumer events, this change comes in the form of a shift in the exchange model from one of promoting information to one of promoting relationships
and experience.
A golden rule of advertising communication is that the message gets across only if the recipient receives something. For example, people read advertisements because they provide information (promotion-information exchange) or because they are amusing (promotion-entertainment exchange).
Trade fairs, according to Francesca Golfetto and Diego Rinallo from the Centre for Research on Markets and the Industrial Sector (CERMES), offer the traditional model of promotion-information exchange. While visitors receive (and accept) the exhibitors’ promotion, they also receive information by comparing the varieties and features of the supply in a certain market. This kind of model has characterised trade shows since the earliest generalist sample trade fairs, which end users and industrial buyers attended to gather information about the latest developments in products and technologies.
However, the promotion-information exchange model has gone by the way of advertising, and entered a state of crisis. Information about products has become more easily accessible through mass communication and large-scale retailing.
Long before the concept and the techniques of experiential marketing began to take hold, some consumer show organisers and exhibitors figured out that fairs, as live events, have the ability – through direct engagement with participants – to move from showcases into engaging exhibitions, where visitors become participants, placing themselves in active relationships with products and participants.
As Golfetto and Rinallo point out, few still attend events to find out what’s new in the marketplace. After a few visits, they already know all about it and can easily find out the rest on the Internet.
Consumers, argue Golfetto and Rinallo, are driven to visit and return to a fair by the experience of the event itself. “The stories told by visitors reveal how a new perspective on organic food or taking care of one’s body is reinforced by interaction with other individuals at the stands of suppliers, or the motivating satisfaction of having tried out and talked about a motorcycle with a champion,” says Rinallo.
“On the other hand, most of the exhibitors at consumer shows have leveraged these trends and increased their demand for experiential stands where the relationship between visitors and products, more than information about products, is crucial,” adds Golfetto. “Or they have opted to emphasise the interaction of visitors with others who share their passion, and the perception of a general atmosphere, over a relationship with the supplier.” In this way, they claim, companies manage to establish closer ties with their current and potential clients, and with the communities they activate around their hobbies, consumption styles and brands themselves.
In the case of B2B fairs, this process started later and is still incomplete, since the fair remains one of the pivotal information resources for company decision-makers. “Nonetheless, from surveys taken at the top international trade fairs, it became clear the motivations of visitors to have information prior to purchase was marginal,” says Rinallo.
At European trade fairs, differing from those in emerging countries, visitors are driven primarily by the need to understand where the industry is going, to search for new ideas, and to ensure the choices they make for the future are appropriate.
“Visitors do not form new ideas through imitation of the things they’ve seen,” says Rinallo. “The ideas come from intellectual stimulation, sensations, perceptions of the market climate, contact with trends taken to extremes, and from interaction with and perceptions of the behaviour of others. Visitors bask in the atmosphere that surrounds the events, fuelling phenomena like offsite events.”
Businesses and cities are well aware of these phenomena and often respond by organising spaces and opportunities for interaction, and not just commercially-oriented activities, but also recreational and cultural events that enhance the climate and the fair experience tied to the participants’ field of interest. “That’s how it went, for example, in Berlin, back in the day, when visitors from the fashion world went in search [outside the ‘official’ show venues] for the perspectives of taste and traditions of a Europe that was expanding,” comments Golfetto.
“The same thing happens today at the Salone del Mobile in Milan where the ‘Fuori Salone’ [offsite events] have become a fixture, attracting in large part professionals and young people who cultivate a passion for design, who are looking for inspiration and ideas for new products by participating in the rites and rituals of their community and by observing the behaviour of the most sophisticated consumers, the Italians, of course,” Rinallo claims.
The need to experience things expressed by visitors, or ‘participants’ as Rinallo and Golfetto argue, is a huge factor in the changing format and content of marketing events, both individual and collective.
Ultimately, the driver of experiential activities is prompting a robust requirement for creativity on the part of event organisers, be they individual or collective. In their words, if an exhibition is to be memorable, the experience certainly can’t be the same as last time.
This was first published in the Issue 4, 2012 of Exhibition World. Any comments? Email exhibitionworld@mashmedia.net
