New Book Takes Aim at Old Problem

By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 4/4/2005

In explaining her impetus to write "Trade Show and Event Marketing," Ruth P. Stevens notes, "Everyone in business marketing is a trade show veteran — whether as an exhibitor or an attendee."

She reached this conclusion based on a large amount of feedback to columns she wrote about tradeshows during her three years as a contributor to DMNews, a weekly trade publication for direct marketers. From this feedback, Stevens gleaned that everybody likes tradeshows, but few know how to do them right.

The problem, she says, is that companies tend to look at face-to-face marketing in terms of discrete events, rather than as part of an overall business strategy.

It's a familiar message that authors have been trying to hammer into corporate exhibit managers' heads at least since James W. Dudley's "Successful Exhibiting" (Adams Media, 1990).

But Stevens does freshen the field of exhibit how-to manuals. Although the book still focuses on tradeshow exhibiting, its practical advice extends to everything that comes before, during and after shows (promotion, follow-up) — as well as modern alternatives (sponsorships, road shows, customers events). An entire chapter is devoted to post-event results analysis and contains sensible guidelines for a company to set goals, then see how it measures up to them.

Perhaps most importantly, this book is written for marketing executives with decision-making authority.

Show managers will be particularly interested in Stevens' third chapter, on event selection and partnering with organizers; and the seventh, where she looks at outboarding and suitcasing from a marketer's perspective.

"Trade Show and Event Marketing" will require some stamina. Its dense 330 pages comprise a detailed examination of every aspect of the event marketer's job.

Stevens is consultant and adjunct professor at New York University and Columbia University, where she received an MBA. A former marketing executive of Time Warner, Ziff Davis and IBM, she is also the author of the "DMA Lead Generation Handbook."