Just Tell the Truth

If we are all fortunate, this paragraph will be the last comment you will ever have to read in an industry publication about the recent Brookings Institution report. It's over; it didn't tell anybody who was familiar with the author anything they hadn't heard before; and besides, let's face it, our core readership of show managers has nothing to lose, even if there is a temporary oversupply of exhibit space.

There are perhaps more fundamental threats to the long-term stability of the industry. A couple of events here at Tradeshow Week over the last few weeks have got me thinking that one of the worst may have to do with something quite simple: veracity.

Most companies in the tradeshow world have avoided the be-accountable-or-else craze that is changing the way many public companies do business. That's partly because there are so many closely held companies in this industry and, in the case of the few big public companies involved, the exhibition division is far enough down the food chain to stay out of the limelight so far.

But eventually, customers, clients and the public will look around and ask, "Who's next?" What got me thinking about this is our own Tradeshow Week 200, the most recent edition of which will be out later this month, and what I learn about the numbers we get whenever we use information from it for a story in the magazine.

Everybody wants to know where their show lands on the list, and for decades TSW directories editors have worked very, very hard to do their best to make sure it's accurate. But no matter what, they must count on people to tell them the truth.

Recently, a show manager called to complain to one of our magazine editors about a story that did not put a show his or her company manages in the best light. However, there was only one fact they were able to come close to disputing: the square footage of the show a few years back in 2001. The information in the story came from the 2002 TSW 200, leading to the inevitable question: Was somebody fudging the figures then or now? (In fairness to this person, their company was not involved with the show back in 2001.)

Another time recently, I noticed a show in the top quarter of the 2004 TSW 200 had never appeared in the listing before, indicating it had the most meteoric success in history — or something else. It turns out what was now being called a particular show was actually a collection of collocated shows that, when the industry it serves was booming, included several that made it into the top 200 in their own right. When the show manager saw them shrinking and falling off the list, they were suddenly unified under one name that made it higher on the list than any of its component parts ever had.

In the wider business world, we are seeing that the Enron-WorldCom-HealthSouth story is not going away. (Witness the recent revelations surrounding AIG.) That may be because investors and consumers are beginning to believe the great corporate institutions should be held accountable the same way government is. How long then can the exhibition industry — which has long benefited from being the exception to most rules of business — resist the trend?