Word of warning

A colleague recently attended the SIFMA (securities industry) show in New York. He was standing in front of an empty 10 by 10, when he was approached by a roaming, looking-for-work consultant who told him, “You need marketing help, and I can provide it.” She had assumed that he worked for the outfit which had its named draped across the drape of the empty 10 by 10. He doesn’t. But the marketing consultant had a point.

We all know that there a plenty of valid reasons to cancel out of a trade show even after you’ve forked over the cash to rent the space. Most of those valid reasons have to do with cash: shipping your booth or schlepping your pop-up, renting the wastebasket and the card swipe, buying the giveaways, flying in the booth-sitters (errr, standers). I’m sure plenty of marketing folks are scrutinizing their budgets and making the go-no-go decision at this very moment.

If you’re a big guy and pull out of the 40×40, the event sponsors will do something else with the space, and likely won’t leave that big gaping hole in the center of the action advertising that Company Big decided their show wasn’t worth it. But if you’re a smaller guy with one of the pipe-and-drape spots around the periphery, you probably won’t get all that much thought or consideration. Yet you don’t want tongues wagging about your being a no-show. For Company Big, everyone will either think that they’ve decided the show is useless, and/or they’ll already know that the place is in financial trouble. For Company Small, the loose-wagging tongues of the competition will always wag about your being in financial trouble, going out of business, too unstable to trust with a purchase….

So if you’re going to cancel, you may want to request that the free signage not be put up. Because yo don’t want to end up looking like the outfit in this picture.

Now, with all the frenzy around putting the show on, your request might not be honored.

But you do want to make it.

As for those running trade shows, on opening day, you might want to walk around and make a few calls to see if those who are missing are actually (for purposes of the show) dead. You should then remove any signs (unless, for whatever reason, the company in question wants to keep their name up there), and throw in a couple of chairs. (One thing that never changes at trade shows: there are never enough chairs for weary attendees to plunk down on so they can sift through the content of their swag bags.)

As the trade show business continues to decline with the rise of the virtual and the fall of the economy, this point may become moot. But if you do have to cancel out on a trade show you’ve signed up for, don’t let this happen to you.

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A tip of the hat to David T-W for sending me this pic.

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