Who would have guessed a few months ago, that a volcano, unknown to most of us and unpronounceable anyway, would be affecting businesses in the UK and Europe?
Volcanoes aside, reading through the pages of this month’s Exhibition News, you could be excused for feeling a little down-hearted by some of the headlines giving news of exhibitions being 'cancelled', 'closed', 'in liquidation', and even, in the case of a fetishist exhibition 'zipped up'!
But my own view is that black clouds, whether formed by ash or bad news, should be put in perspective. The airline industry is steadily figuring out ways of living with the ash cloud, thank goodness, as the exhibition industry must surely do when facing the dynamically changing habits of the so-called Google generation.
Exhibitions are, as Richard Armitage points out on page 37 of Exhibition News, “the only place where people can touch, the product, sniff it, and give it a kick”. Well, maybe not quite in my own case, marketing the conference facilities at the University of Leeds; I worry about the sniffing and kicking bit, but I know what he means!
It’s a great face-to-face opportunity and as such is invaluable. But we do have to be more choosy than ever about where we exhibit, due to costs and the current economic climate, exhibition space charges are, in my view too high, and too inflexible, and regardless of sales folk reeling off visitor registrations, some venue exhibitions are very much quieter than they used to be.
I’d also like to see venue exhibition organisers embracing new technology such as RFID technology, creating visually stimulating exhibitions, and fully utilising social networking techniques.
Bring about a revolution in the way the stands look, the journey through the hall, the methods of networking and information-swapping, and exhibiting will truly compete with the many other methods of marketing and information-gathering available today.
It’s all about impact, as Eyafjallajokull would say, if it could talk.
