NABbing the Spotlight at First Full-facility Show

Association overcomes first-day challenges and draws record crowds

By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 4/30/2007

Las Vegas—The Natl. Assn. of Broadcasters was hit the first day of NAB with some of those annoying challenges every organizer dreads, but it didn't stop the top-20 tradeshow from getting even bigger.

According to preliminary numbers, 108,200 attendees registered for the broadcasting industry's biggest U.S. event, which featured 1,540 exhibiting firms filling 920,000 net square feet of the Las Vegas Convention Center. That compares with 860,000 net sq. ft., 1,464 exhibitors and 85,397 attendees in 2006, which earned the show a No. 13 ranking on this year's Tradeshow Week 200.

Although NAB conference sessions started April 14, exhibits didn't open until Monday, April 16. That day, the city experienced an unusual spat of rain (one-tenth of an inch, according to the Natl. Weather Service) and wind (gusts up to 22 mph).

"I've been here for nine shows now, and that was the first time it's rained," said Chris Brown, NAB vice president of conventions and business operations.

Huge signs plastered to the front of the LVCC began to peel in the wind Sunday morning. With the rain that night, pieces of them started falling off and Brown decided they had to come down the next day.

"We just did a no-questions-asked (refund)," he said of the lucrative sponsorships. "It was the first day, and everybody did what they were supposed to do."

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of Monday's problems. Later that morning, the LVCC's Internet service went down, making for a stressful registration opening.

"We had some issues there," Brown said. "We had to take some credit card payments without authorization." [For more on the Internet outage, see sidebar below.]

Add to that the anxiety show management and exhibitors were already feeling about a completely reorganized showfloor, and you've got enough to keep more than a few people on the edge of their seats.

For a couple of years, the association had been rethinking the categorization and distribution of exhibits. In time for the space draw at last year's show (for space at the 2007 show), Brown and his team had come up with a new floorplan and introduced it to exhibitors.

"Our categories had become irrelevant," he explained. "They were tied to the medium (film, TV, and so on), but the way all content is produced now is essentially the same. This show is about the content process."

Major showfloor categories now are for acquisition, production, management, systems, distribution and delivery — describing the stages in the process of gathering, recording, editing, handling, storing and disseminating content.

So far, so good. Here's where it got tricky: The reorganization also involved moving some anchor exhibitors out of their cherished spots.

"One challenge was to figure out as clean a way as possible to deal with those whose business spreads across the different platforms," Brown said. "We wanted to help drive traffic to all parts of the building, rather than having a lot of major companies at the front of the hall."

Apple, for instance, moved about halfway back in the lower level of the LVCC's South Hall. Sony went to the top floor of South Hall. Broadcasting flagships like Harris, Grass Valley and Dolby left South Hall altogether for the North Hall.

When asked how Grass Valley took the news, Laura Barber-Miller, vice president of marketing and communications of the company, said, "Not well. We felt that South Hall was a good location. We got good traffic there. We were admittedly reluctant."

Still, the company didn't have much choice. Jacque Thomas, Grass Valley's senior manager of tradeshows and events, used her role on the NAB exhibitor advisory committee to help find ways to make the move as smooth and profitable as possible.

"We warmed to the idea as we saw NAB working to balance the load," Barber-Miller said. "It was clear we needed to be supportive."

So how'd it go?

"Great," she said. "We got as much traffic here (as in the past), and probably 15 to 20 percent more leads."

Others agreed. In fact, no exhibitor that spoke with TSW indicated the change was a bad one — not even Louise Christensen, spokesperson for Digital Video Systems, which found itself hidden behind one of South Hall's notorious huge columns.

"We were on the main aisle last year," Christensen said. "That was better, but at least here we have more time with customers."

Companies clustered around Apple, which drew crowds of hundreds eager to see the presentation of Final Cut Studio 2, were particularly pleased.

"We did get moved. We used to be right in the front of North Hall," said Todd Kern, director of marketing for Killer Tracks. "I don't like the walk all the way back here, and we used to have easy access to the cabs, but from an organizational standpoint, this has worked out really, really well. We have had a lot of traffic this year."

Other exhibitors agreed that dispersing anchor exhibitors was a good idea.

"I'm a proponent of spreading them out as much as possible," said Cindy Zuelsdorf, director of marketing for Ensemble Designs, who had just returned from selecting her space for the 2008 show. "Next year, there are four really big companies in one area of North Hall, so I avoided that area."

Zuelsdorf said she's had a different spot in the show every year since Ensemble began exhibiting in 1989, because the company's relatively small size has prevented it from racking up enough priority points to get dibs — until now. "For the first time, we'll have the same spot two years in a row," she said.

Next year's exhibition is scheduled April 14–17 at the LVCC. Brown said the association has contracts with the facility through 2010.