Corporate Exhibitors: Should We Stay or Go?

Most companies that want to entice buyers to spend money on their products understand one way to reach them in an engaging and effective manner is by standing in front of them on a showfloor.

Still, other companies have decided that a booth isn’t the best place for them to be because they’ve found that their customers are easier to reach through other mediums.

Tradeshow Week editors spoke to corporate exhibitors from both sides on why they stay and why they go.

Not only is attendance dropping at some of the country’s largest shows, but also the number of exhibiting companies is diminished – some for economic reasons, others because of new company strategies.

Despite weathering a tough economy right now, several of the largest companies still find plenty of value in getting their products in front of buyers on a showfloor.

One such company is Sony Electronics, which participates in about 10 tradeshows each year, plus several tabletop events, said Alec Shapiro, senior vice president of sales and marketing at the company.

Some of the largest shows the company exhibits in are the Consumer Electronics Assn.’s Intl. CES, PMA – The Worldwide Community of Imaging Assns.’ PMA Intl. Convention & Trade Show and the Natl. Assn. of Broadcasters’ The NAB Show.

Shapiro said exhibiting at tradeshows is important to the Sony division, especially at NAB’s show.

“For us, NAB is a global show. We have customers who come there from all over the world,” he added. “It provides us with a showroom for four days to a very large number and a diverse array of customers.”

The equipment Sony Electronics displays at the shows is expensive and hard for the company to transport easily from client to client, Shapiro said. “The tradeshow provides us with a forum to reach a large number of customers,” he added.

Plus, Sony Electronics isn’t concerned about the recent trend of decreased attendance at shows.

“I think the benefits stay the same no matter what the attendance is,” Shapiro said.

Fewer attendees also mean that company representatives are able to spend more time with the attendees who are there and those attendees are able to spend more time at Sony’s exhibit, he added.

However, those bright spots don’t mean that Sony Electronics still doesn’t consider ways to cut costs.

Shapiro said “to some extent” the company is curbing its tradeshow presence.

“At some shows, we’ve cut back (on exhibit space),” he added. In addition, Sony Electronics is looking at other ways to trim costs, Shapiro said, but “that has more to do with our manpower at the show.”

Also, instead of physically gathering employees for preshow training – which would have incurred travel and lodging costs – Shapiro said the company had a two-day webcast for the sales force.

“It was very successful,” he added, and said the company plans to keep doing preshow training in that way even after the economy improves.

Besides Sony, at this year’s The NAB Show, scheduled April 18-23 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Avid Technology, a high-profile exhibitor that opted not to be at last year’s show, will be back on the floor.

Avid’s decision to pull out of the 2008 event was a result of consumer surveys, according to company officials at the time. Customers were more interested in how Avid could help with day-to-day production challenges and less concerned with the company’s tradeshow presence. Company officials also said the change marked a marketing strategy shift.

Avid officials were unavailable for comment about the return to NAB this year.

–Stephanie Corbin

Long before the downturn in the economy came into play, anchor exhibitors decided to skip out on industry-leading shows, insisting they didn’t need to be on the showfloor anymore to market their products.

Perhaps one of the biggest, and highest-profile, blows to a particular show was Apple opting out of the Natl. Assn. of Broadcasters’ The NAB Show last year.

Apple spokesman Anuj Nayar said at the time, “Apple has been cutting back its participation at shows for the past few years because there are better ways to reach our customers.”

NAB didn’t lose any sleep over the defection. Dennis Wharton, the association’s executive vice president of media relations, noted, “One exhibitor won’t make or break the show.”

Apple wasn’t done though. How would you like to have a show called Macworld that, presumably, would prominently feature Apple and have it not only announce it was dropping out, but also that the keynote that’s always been given by its CEO, Steve Jobs, would be scrapped?

Well, starting next year, that’s exactly what Macworld’s reality will be. Apple nearly echoed its NAB statement when company officials said of the Macworld decision, “Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so, like many companies, tradeshows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers.”

Macworld Vice President and General Manager Paul Kent took the news with a certain savoir faire, saying, “Macworld has served the Mac community for 25 years, and we look forward to many more successful years of Macworld to come.”

In the gaming universe, the biggest of the big was the Entertainment Software Assn.’s E³/Electronic Entertainment Expo – until exhibitors asked the show to downsize. In 2007, it was split into two separate events – Entertainment for All Expo, for consumers, and the E³ Media & Business Summit, for buyers and media.

But, even before the first E for All got off the ground, anchor exhibitors that had been a part of the original mega-show – including Sony, Activision, Vivendi, Disney and Microsoft – started dropping out like flies.

It seems ESA and the show’s producer, IDG World Expo, couldn’t please everyone at the time. However, now, two years later, several of the anchors are back for the once-again revamped, and renamed, show – E3 Expo.

“The 2009 E3 Expo will be the pre-eminent North American computer and video game event,” said ESA CEO Michael Gallagher.

Instead of just pulling out of one show, there’s at least one pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline, that is threatening to abandon tradeshows altogether.

During a session at the Professional Convention Management Assn. Annual Meeting, held in January in New Orleans, Stan Hull, GlaxoSmithKline’s vice president of pharmaceuticals, said he told the American College of Chest Physicians, “I don’t see these medical exhibits working in the future. People need to understand the perception is that we spend millions on getting doctors to prescribe our products.”

Eric Allen, executive vice president of the Healthcare Convention & Exhibitors Assn., shot back, “The best way forward for associations and convention marketers to maintain the value of health care exhibit halls is not through alarmist statements such as Mr. Hull’s, but through working together to ensure the educational value of health care exhibits remains strong.”

–Rachel Wimberly