TSEA Revives, Revamps Focus Awards
By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 7/12/2004
Following a one-year hiatus, the Trade Show Exhibitors Assn.'s Focus Awards are back, and they've got a new mission: recognize not just traditional tradeshow exhibits according to their size, but honor success and innovation in the panoply of forms face-to-face marketing takes today.
In 2003, TSEA canceled the 23-year-old awards program and assembled a task force to bring it up to date. Andrew Dudek, exhibit marketing manager for Telcordia and chairman-elect of TSEA, explained that in looking at prior years' contestants, task force members noticed a trend toward recognizing exhibit design over marketing strategy.
"In the past, people would say, 'This is a great design, because it's lighter, cheaper on transportation and drayage, uses new materials, and it's really pretty,'" Dudek explained. But an exhibit marketer's job is more complicated than just overseeing a good design, he said. "We're multi-tasking marketing engineers ... We're event managers. We wanted to acknowledge our broader responsibilities."
To accomplish this, the awards have been expanded to include special and proprietary events in addition to tradeshow exhibits. Also, rather than divvying up prizes by booth-size categories, the new awards are categorized according to the various stages in the marketing process: pre-event, environment, face-to-face experience, post-event and integrated solution.
That is the key to the revamped Focus Awards, in Dudek's opinion. He believes dividing award categories based on the activities exhibit managers control will encourage them to think and talk about their entries. "In the past, exhibit houses would enter on behalf of a client, and it would become a design-oriented entry," he said. "We're trying to drive the process so that, even if an exhibit house enters for an exhibit manager, somebody still has to sit down and talk about the audience that was targeted, the direct mail that drove traffic, the follow-up program, and the other elements of a successful marketing program."
TSEA President Michael Bandy added that the awards have been moved from spring, when exhibitors are generally busy, to summer, in order to encourage more participants. The association has issued a call for entries of programs created between July 1, 2002 and July 1, 2004.
"Part of TSEA's essence is to provide recognition for its members," Bandy said. "We see the Focus Awards as a key component in fulfilling this service, by recognizing the best of what this industry can produce."
The revival of the awards is the latest in a series of initiatives keeping TSEA busy lately. In April, the association announced a revamped conference program and exhibition for this year's TS2 — The Trade Show About Trade Shows; in May, it landed major general contracting firm GES Exposition Services as a sponsor of the show's educational program; and last month it announced it would resume management of the show next year after 12 years of outsourcing.
Focus Awards judges will announce and showcase winners at next year's TS2, July 11–14 in Washington, D.C. Winners will also be featured in all of TSEA's publications. People interested in entering the contest can find more information on the association's Web site, www.tsea.org, or at its booth at this year's TS2, July 12–15 at Chicago's McCormick Place.
