What About Tradeshows?

I recently attended a tradeshow in Providence, RI, and it was full of very sad sights indeed, at least from a marketing perspective. There were lots of folks in sharp-looking suits standing in booths and hoping that those of us walking the aisles might stop to talk to them. Instead of trying engage us and draw us into their booths, they just stood there, hoping. And many of booths were so drab that we passed by without a second thought.

One of the biggest challenges at tradeshows is cutting through the noise and clutter of the event to get people interested in what you’re offering. I’ve worked tradeshows and felt that pain. It’s that need to get attention that generates cheesy giveaways, free massages, and booth babes.

But this tradeshow got me thinking: what about wireless digital picture frames?

It’s common these days for some tradeshow booths to include TVs. Since eyes see, naturally drawn to TVs, showing presentations or short films is a great way to draw in attendees.

But TVs are expensive and heavy and they can’t connect to the web. If digital picture frames, especially really big ones, get more affordable, digital picture frames could become a big part of tradeshow booths.

The ways in which exhibitors can use digital picture frames for presentations and in-booth art are pretty obvious, I’d think. They replace TVs or laptops to show your PowerPoint slides. They show video related to your business. Fine.

But what if you had an Internet-connected frame at your tradeshow booth? That could offer some neat possibilities.

• If you were exhibiting at a construction tradeshow, you could impress attendees with up-to-the-minute photos from your construction sites.
• Marketers could easily demo dynamic portfolios in their booths.
• Photographers could – well, that’s obvious, I think.
• And branded digital picture frames with pre-loaded content could make great giveaways and booth prizes, too.

The obstacles to this are the same as in other areas that digital frames could operate: the cost and size of the frames.

But when it comes to tradeshows, there’s another obstacle, maybe even a bigger one than those two. The cost of Internet access.

A day’s worth of Internet access at a tradeshow can easily run a few hundred dollars or more, substantially increasing the cost of exhibiting. With that kind of cost, it can be hard to justify the money for Internet access unless there’s a truly compelling way to tie the Internet into your tradeshow lead-generation plan. After all, the wireless frame doesn’t talk to prospects or grab business cards for you.

As prices come down, we’ll likely start to see more wireless digital picture frames at tradeshows. And as they become more common, marketing companies will become more comfortable with them, leading to innovative and exciting uses. Hopefully they’ll start showing up soon and make the next tradeshow I visit more dynamic.