Medium or Marketplace?

One day recently, Chris Meyer of the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority said to me, "By the way, tradeshows are a marketplace," referring to my many comments here and recently at the Intl. Assn. for Exhibition Management annual meeting that it is a medium that must evolve.

Well, Chris, you got me thinking — and you may be half right. I do look at the tradeshow industry as a medium, and believe that media history may guide us here.

When radio came along, everyone said newspapers were dead. Nope, it didn't happen. But they did change and evolve. In fact, in the first three quarters of 2004, ad spending in local newspapers was up 6.6 percent over the same period of 2003 — taking $18 billion of a $102-billion ad spend, according to Competitive Media Reporting.

When TV came along, everyone said radio was dead. Nope. Radio ad spending in 2003 took another $8 billion of that $102 billion.

When cable TV came along, it was network TV that was supposed to die — and it did hurt for a while. But now networks own cable companies and are seeing an amazing resurgence thanks to super-hits like the "CSI" franchise and "Desperate Housewives." And network TV ad revenue was up 14 percent in the period we're talking about — with $17 billion in spend.

Guess which medium had the biggest increase in the first three quarters of this year? The Internet, at 26 percent.

Why is that important? Because among the 30 percent of tradeshow exhibitors who shifted event marketing funds this year, 53 percent of their dollars went to the Internet.

The tradeshow industry does face a monumental array of challenges — much like radio and TV in the past. The problem is that the threats are not as clear as TV was to radio and these threats come from mediums and other marketplaces.

Here are some of them:

• the Internet — a medium
• industry consolidation (88 percent of show managers tell us it has caused exhibitors to take less space) — a marketplace at work
• direct mail — a medium
• corporate events — a marketplace
• continuing reluctance of people to travel — a market force
• misperceptions concerning ROI — lack of understanding the value of a medium (or market)
• shifting strategies (tradeshow dollars going elsewhere) — market forces impacting choices.

What can we learn from this? Probably that we are both: a channel, a conduit of information, but also a marketplace.

What is the unique value of tradeshows? How about the fact that no other form of marketing is both a medium and a market?