Copy of Why Is a Trade Show Like An Orange? - UPDATED AND EXPANDED May, 2024

An orange grew from a metaphor to a model to a system to turbocharge return on investment, opportunity, and experience (ROI, ROO, and ROE) for trade show exhibitors.

(NOTE: It's been almost eight years since I posted this story to illustrate that too many exhibitors leave value on the table. The following is a slightly edited version of my original article, followed by its evolution from a helpful model to a full-blown service that takes a 360-degree approach and squeezes far more value out of exhibitors' trade show efforts.)

A - The Original Article

"Why Is A Trade Show Like An Orange?"

At a booth staff training I conducted, I queried my audience, holding up two equal halves of a freshly sliced Florida beauty?known as a Royal Honey Bell, a sweet and juicy favorite of mine.?To one side of the table was a clear 8-ounce juice glass. To the other side was an identical glass plus a citrus squeezer, a grater, and a small bowl.

“Well, trade shows can be messy,” a woman in the front row replied, no doubt noticing the orange stain my clumsy slicing produced on the otherwise pure white linen-clad table before her. ?

“Yes!” I replied enthusiastically, “How so?" I asked,?though it wasn’t the answer I was looking for.?

"So many details, loading dock and floor confusion, a rat race at times, trying to manage different people from different areas of the company."

"Well put," I commended her. "OK, why else?”

"There’s a specific season to them,” a man in the back of the room offered.

Hmmmm, I thought…this is a sharp audience. They love metaphors but still hadn’t picked the most fruitful one for my discussion. ?

“Absolutely,” I said assuredly, but more softly finished with, “though I am looking for another reason.”

"Some of them are rotten," said a mid-level manager type, partly for comic effect but, in reality, a deadly serious point when a show loses its raison d'etre. ?

After no more suggestions were made, I revealed my point. ?

“An orange has a finite amount of juice, just like a trade show has a finite amount of potential business?for your company. And like the orange, a show costs the same “per pound” to attend…you know, space rental, flights, hotels, cabs, meals.”? I was getting some nods of agreement now.? “But,” I demonstrated by halfheartedly squeezing one half of the orange into a clear glass cup, “I can squeeze it a bit and get a nice sip of fresh juice or I can squeeze the heck out of it“ (as I employed the leverage of the citrus squeezer) “and have many sweet gulps of juice” (that I proceeded to sip joyfully before them). ?"Plus," I continued, "I can grate the zest from the skin for making orange muffins, take the seeds and plant orange trees, and place the remains in my compost (bowl)." Then came the clincher.

"I will pay the same for an orange whether I squeeze it a little or wring it for all it's worth!"

"This is why trade shows are like oranges. If you only squeeze the show for 40% of the value it provides you, will the show send you a rebate check for 60% of the cost of your space, material handling, and utilities?? Will the laborers do the same?? How about the airline, the hotel, the cabbies, the restaurants, and the freight companies?

Now, everyone in the room was with me. I saw heads nodding, co-workers whispering to each other, and a CFO making notes on her tablet. ?

"When you invest to exhibit at a trade show, you need to extract as much value as you can." In my 40+ years of experience, I've worked with many marketers who found trade show details are difficult to stay on top of.? One reason is that they have many non-trade show tasks competing for?their time.? Another is that many trade show managers are new to the role and haven’t been mentored enough.? For whatever reason, almost everyone attending the seminar that day agreed that they were not extracting anywhere near as much value as they could, and this was at a time when management was leaning on them to justify their trade show budgets.

So, a juicy trade show is one where you a more robust list of marketing, sales, and client relations objectives to fulfill. ?If it's something you want to start doing, please remember this one important thing...

...bring an apron!

B - The Eight Domains of Profitable Trade Show Marketing? MODEL

When I expanded the orange metaphor (squeezing value) and applied it to the specific buckets or domains of trade show marketing, I created The Eight Domains of Profitable Trade Show Marketing MODEL. Behind each domain lie areas for setting objectives. Under the "Plan" section, for example, is "Budgeting." It's the best place to start that activity—after the market research takes place and before more specific components like "Promotion" and "Design" begin.

The Eight Domains MODEL spawned a new metaphor:

A Trade Show Program Is Like an Eight-cylinder Engine

This metaphor will hit home if you've ever lost the spark to one or more cylinders in your automobile engine. Losing one cylinder will cause the car to run rough and lose much of its power, but you can still get home if you don't live on a steep hill. Lose two cylinders, and the engine will barely run. You will probably make it home if you live downhill. Lose three, and the engine will die and not start. You'll be walking or calling a rideshare.

The Eight Domains MODEL acts like that engine. If you do everything right in seven of the eight domains; your market research, planning, designing, promoting, executing, capturing, and assessing, but have a poorly trained booth staff, the engine of your tradeshow program loses a lot of its power to return value because you spent the same or nearly the same amount of money, and yet that one cylinder, staffing, was not optimized. With that one area of weakness, you let too much potential business slip away.

Take a moment to imagine what happens when you miss the mark on just one of each of the domains. Profitability is squandered, accounting begins to pinch your budget, and what could have been a very profitable investment begins to go south. In my 40 years of experience, I have learned if you select a well-managed and well-promoted show that brings in your target audience, there is plenty of profitability if you address all eight domains. The engine of your exhibiting program will climb the steepest hills and still purr like a kitten.

C - ExhibitAudit.com

So how can you activate a whole lot more value across all eight domains of your trade show investment? With the strategies and tactics within our new offering, ExhibitAudit.com.*

ExhibitAudit.com takes The Eight Domains MODEL and populates each domain with actionable strategies and tactics. Our resources include hundreds of KPIs based on low-cost to higher-cost options for increasing the value of every show in an exhibitor's program. The strategies address PR, HR, Competitive Analysis, Networking, Co-marketing Opps., and dozens more.

Look for future articles where I will provide more details on The Eight Domains MODEL and ExhibitAudit.com.*

*Please note that the site ExhibitAudit.com. will accept your contact information right now but will not launch content until mid-summer 2024.

Bill Lauf Jr. is the principal of William Lauf Consulting LLC, a trade show marketing firm that focuses on strategies, tactics, and coaching to bring contemporary thoughts, ideas, and actionable objectives, strategies, and tactics to trade show marketers across hundreds of industries. His seminar topics include Measurement and Metrics, 21st-Century Booth Staffing, Cut Waste and Grow More Value From Your Exhibiting Efforts, Secrets on Capturing ROO as well as ROI, ROE, and more.