Investing in exhibiting

29 July 2011

Investing in exhibiting is very costly and usually forms a very high proportion of any marketing budget making it vital that you get the exhibition stand design and build absolutely right.

Experience shows that no matter how good the brief there is no substitute for a face to face meeting with the stand designer, but that doesn't mean you should not prepare a brief.  A written brief will help you focus on key objectives and make the meeting with the designer more productive.

What to include on the written brief? There are the obvious things like name of show and the dates, venue, stand size and whether it has adjacent walls. In addition there are the things that are specific to you and your reasons for going.

Objectives

Are you going to sell product - if so what will be displayed. If at all possible you need to know what you are going to take and the size of each product. That will allow the designer to plan enough space for meaningful displays. It is the product that is important not the stand.

You may be going just to meet people and make contacts or promote your service without showing product. In this case no doubt hospitality will form a big part of the stand. How many people should be seated? Do you need private meeting rooms?  What level of hospitality do you want to offer?

Do They Know Who You Are?

How well known is your company? If you were to give you name to visitors as they enter the hall would they know what it means and what you offer? Maybe they have to be told not only your name but what you do and be given a reason to come onto the stand.

Stand Content

Graphics - do you have images and key messages that you want to see on the stand? Provide PDFs of the images if at all possible

Audio Visual - It is always good to have movement on a stand and a good audio visual presentation can create interest, providing you have the content available or will commit resource to creating it.

Stand Attractors - will you consider fun attractions like a magician, music, caricaturist all of which sound fairly standard but do attract attention and help you to be remembered after the event.

Other general requirements are :

Store Size - and indication of what you want to put in it helps. Remember though stand space is very expensive and a store can soon become a very expensive cloakroom.

Reception Counter - gives a point of focus to the stand so the visitor can clearly see where he can go for information.

Budget - no stand design can start without a budget. Just as an architect needs to know the budget before he can start to design a house a stand designer needs a budget to designer a stand.

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