Powerful technological, social, and economic trends have changed faces of many industries and business sectors, from banking to travel to retail to newspapers. But exhibitions look the same as they did one hundred years ago.
People come to trade fairs not only for information and contacts, but also for experience, fun and passion. The entertainment component of exhibitions is in demand even more at traditional industrial fairs, especially at fairs of new industries and consumer events. I recently saw an airline advert depicting a rock concert that claimed: “You can’t download this”. This motto describes above all else the value of experience in our lives, lives that shift more and more to virtual.
Now a new generation comes to our exhibitions. Generation Y is described as more individualistic, ego-centric and self-dependent. This generation values knowledge much less, because, as observers frequently point out: ‘Google is embedded in their brain’. Instead, freedom and fun are much more valuable. Their thoughts and texts are shorter, they like pictures more than texts, and they can do several things at a time. We need new approaches to communicate with this kind of person. Our fairs should be more visitor-driven, focused, visually attractive and with more ‘gamification’ (the use of game thinking and game approaches to improve customers’ engagement, interest, and satisfaction). The three most important components of exhibitions should be content, meetings and fun; and all three components should be personalised and ‘gamificated’ to fulfil the needs of this generation. Indeed, different models coexist: there are some Generation X-driven events and some Generation Y-driven events. Examples of these two are exhibitions of power engineering on the one hand, and marketing technologies on the other.
Fields of interest are diversifying, and with that exhibitions have to be more focused. At the same time we need to keep show sizes up to protect our profit margin. This means we have to have deeper segmentation and improve search tools to provide people with added value at our exhibitions.
As the value of knowledge decreases in the new social and economic environment, the value of communication goes up. New communication circles are wider than ever, and the number of weak social links is much higher. People are now members of numerous communities at a time, based on common interests or hobbies (the borders between work and life are dissolving, which makes job interests closer to hobbies and vice versa). These informal communities begin to play an extremely important role in the success of an exhibition, bringing thousands of visitors and providing them with content and meetings and fun. Exhibition organisers have to be members of these communities, otherwise they will not consider us peers, and trustful ones at that. So we need our own people within communities, either staff members or our fair ambassadors. Communities are similar to modern tribes, where trust is the value and only insiders are trustful, and there are no hierarchies. A good fair is a place where virtual friends and peers meet regularly or encounter each other for the first time to de-virtualise.
The culture of visiting is altering. As the value of time and networking increases, visitors prepare much better before the show. “What’s up on the stage? What kind of content can I get? Who else will attend? Oh, some of my Facebook friends! And also some people from my groups and circles. That’s a good reason to join.” Now, when all social groups are at the same social networks, we can influence people’s motivation like never before. And the first people we convince to attend are more important than ever.
The culture of exhibiting is also changing. Our typical exhibition booths often are still boxes with counters, where a buyer is on one side and a seller on another. This is similar to a traditional shop with counters separating consumers from suppliers with its products. But the role of a consumer in the modern economy is dramatically changing. The consumer now feels they are a king or a queen: much more informed, much more powerful, protected by the law and public opinion, united in communities, often actively participating in value creation. Marketing gurus even invented a new word ‘prosumers’ (producer-consumer) for such customers, which are partially producers as well. In fact, this increasing number of prosumers makes the line between B2B and B2C events much more fuzzy. So how can we still sell to these empowered consumers across a counter?
When exhibitions are transformed to community meeting places, box booths are transformed into open zones for community meetings, where a brand of a producer is a flag around which people gather. A trade fair in 2020 is likely to be a number of such open zones, where brand ambassadors or evangelists are doing their best to convince consumers to adapt their ‘brand religion’. Trade show booths will look like parks rather than palaces. Selling is consulting now more than ever, and even traditionally conservative sectors will adapt to reflect this.
With the changing role of consumers, a trade fair increasingly becomes a meeting place between buyers and buyers, consumers and consumers (C2C in addition to B2B and B2C). Consumers can not only download from an event; acquiring information, knowledge, contacts, but also upload; increasing the value of an event. This leads us to the concept of ‘Wiki exhibitions’ open-source and created by enormously big groups of people on a voluntary basis. The Encyclopedia Britannica was created by the most talented and well paid authors, but Wikipedia overcomes through number of users, number of entries and even in quality of texts.
If we look around, we find ourselves in an economy that is more and more a relationship economy. Wiki and open source products and services, crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, free and ‘freemium’ models of access, sharing and gifting - all this is far from the traditional capitalism model with its fixed roles of producers and consumers, value creation, ownership, financing, and competition. Reputation and relationships are key points in this new economic model. And since we as exhibition organisers are relationship brokers, we hold the key place in this new economy, which ensures a long life for our business, if we are able to adapt new models and principles in our business.
This was first published in issue 1/2014 of EW. Any comments? Email exhibitionworld@mashmedia.net
