Whose Community Is It, Anyway?

There's untapped sales and marketing potential for show organizers in popular media like blogs and online communities, but some will have to change their ways or face big problems if they want to take advantage of those opportunities.

Business-to-business media companies have become preoccupied with finding ways to make money from online content. Lately, they've been obsessed with the synergy between different content delivery platforms, and the revenue-generating potential in cross marketing properties like events and publications.

I spotted an example of how it can be done last week while covering Las Vegas' fall fashion events. One of them, POOL Trade Show, held Aug. 28–30 at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, landed a sponsorship with MySpace, News Corp.'s immensely popular online community that recently broke the 100 million-member mark.

POOL included the MySpace Lounge, an Internet café amid exhibits for designers whose lines are featured in MySpace's new fashion section, launched at the show. POOL organizers also denoted other exhibitors with MySpace accounts by putting the three-silhouette icon next to their names in the show guide.

The lounge seemed like the perfect marriage of virtual and face-to-face communities. POOL caters to a youthful crowd, the Otis College of Art and Design types who hand-embroider art on beat-up jeans and sell them for obscene prices on Melrose Avenue. Judging by the MySpace icons dotting the POOL guide, about a third of the exhibitors are active on the site as well.

POOL Director of Operations Mindy Wiener said she and MySpace have big plans for the future. Although she didn't give any details, it's pretty easy to imagine ways this partnership could benefit both the show and the site.

I couldn't get any details about future collaboration with POOL from MySpace either. Nobody from the company was in the MySpace Lounge. All I found was a bay of open laptops being used by show attendees.

Nor did the MySpace contacts I was given return my calls. Probably, they were too busy fielding inquiries from fashion magazines to get back to me, but the silence did get me thinking: Does an online community with the popular appeal of MySpace care what the outside world thinks or writes about it?

The very by-the-people-for-the-people nature of sites like MySpace and YouTube has posed interesting challenges for their publishers and advertisers — challenges worth thinking about as show organizers consider partnerships with such communities, along with blogs and other user-generated media.

Here's just one of those challenges: While it's great to be part of the buzz (and to get your name in front of those 100 million pairs of eyes), the downside is you must relinquish a certain amount of control over your message.

Sure, plenty of tradeshows have their own blogs and online communities. But the Web sites with real grassroots popularity — those where thought leaders in the industries tradeshows serve are defining tomorrow's trends — are the ones where people are free to post whatever they want, where enthusiasts and believers are talking to each other, not lapping up marketing-speak written by PR agents.

To tap the true potential of an online community, an organizer has to give up the compulsion to put a positive spin on everything that happens at his or her show, and accept the fact that the sponsor's customers might criticize it in a public forum.

A show like POOL has little to lose. It's small, hip and run by people who already belong to the community comprising its attendees and exhibitors. It would likely take criticism in stride.

Here in the Tradeshow Week newsroom, however, we are acquainted with plenty of show organizers who go to extravagant lengths in their attempts to have their shows viewed in a positive way, to say the least, regardless of the facts.

It will be interesting to see if these organizers can navigate the open sea of community information — a sea that could flood tradeshow floors in the coming years.