Tales from the Trade Show Floor
Contests and freebees and rock stars, oh my! If you made it to the trade show floor at this year’s CMA National Convention, then you saw a little bit of everything this conference has to offer. You couldn’t help but hear the music as some wanna-be-a-rock star drummed (er, tried to drum???) alongside the best of Metallica at the Lime Outdoor mobile billboard. And who didn’t get a coffee at Motum’s Café Paris? Okay, I don’t drink coffee, so they gave me an equally addictive hazelnut hot chocolate instead!
Playtime aside, there were deals being made on the tradeshow floor. Raman at Akran Marketing can tell you that the hottest request this year has been for portable paper shredders. About the size of a tissue box, it’s no sneezing matter as people kept coming to his booth to order them.
What’s more, there was a wealth of knowledge all in one room. I can’t remember the last time I saw so many industry experts on the tradeshow floor at one time: Michael Adams, Dr. Anthony Lea, Dr. Zhen Mei and many more.
How about icing on the cake? There are lots of new products and services launching this year that will help marketers reach their customers with improved targeting. Generation5 announced a new product that gets down and dirty with digital media habits and Parcel Design showed us that ‘going green’ can be a beautiful thing with biodegradable flower pots and growing gifts (real growing gifts, not the kind you get from friends in Facebook).
For those who made the trek up the escalator, you probably received the kind of attention rarely seen at trade shows. For those of you who didn’t make it, you’ll not want to miss it next year.
