How (not) to run a industry stand/booth at a major exhibition

I have just returned from IBC, the annual exhibition and conference for the TV/Video industry that takes place in Amsterdam every September. In fact, this was my 25th visit to Amsterdam for this show since 1998 (only missing the two lockdown years). As someone who has been to a lot of these as an attendee, as a vendor, as an exhibitor and as someone who has presented and moderated in the conference and associated sessions over the years, I felt that some things have not changed.... The ability of some exhibitors to do the wrong things that impact their standing and engagement at this show. I thought it would be good to write some of these down with a degree of sarcasm, and not address directly those who put these stands together poorly. After all, most do extremely well and do all the right things, but it is still a little distressing to see bad approaches still there... including things that I thought went away in the 1990s - the booth babe. Much of the following is said in jest, but with a serious underlying message... particularly for the really bad behaviour that I would see companies censured or forbidden for attending again. I leave it to you to set your own 'line that people have crossed' on these..

• Use 'dolly birds'* or non-functional staff on your booth, because they really sex your B2B product up by looking like the backing singers of a Robert Palmer video.
• Ensure your booth is not welcoming by putting a sign up that says 'Invite Only'
• Run a defence team at all entries to your Booth and interrogate everyone before allowing them on the booth, as a lead pre-qualification
• Make sure your booth is as closed as possible, so that no one wants to cross the threshold.
• Don't allow time wasters on to your booth - those students will never join the industry, become an engineer, a manager, a director, and then a VP / CTO who would make future decisions about your product selection when running their RFP...
• Ensure your booth is not welcoming by filling it with too many staff and other hangers on eating their lunch.
• Don't have an up to date photo on your LinkedIn profile for all of your presenters, and make sure that they don't look at LinkedIn at all and have their contact email address there be an old email account they don't use any more.
• Make sure your badge is turned around so they cannot see your name when you welcome them on the booth - in fact don't have a badge at all!
• Don't tell anyone anything about your products that would be helpful to understanding them.
• Definitely make sure industry consultants cannot come on the booth - because they never work with any of your future or current clients.
• Make sure your booth is just a big meeting room with high walls so it looks incredibly unwelcoming.
• Don't have demonstrations of your product / services at all, even slide ware.
• Eat your Kebab lunches on the high tables that you have in your booth for meetings with clients.
• Don't have refreshments on your booth, and definitely don't offer anything to any visitors - got to keep control of those costs.
• Don't have a booth networking 'happy hour'.
• If you are going to have refreshments/drinks in your happy hour, make sure only alcohol is available, and never have food that caters for those with allergies or intolerances, or even personal choices.
• Make sure there is a step up into your booth on all parts of the booth or the main ones anyway, so you can see how adept wheelchair users can be in getting into your booth, or for tired legged attendees to look funny when they trip over the step.
• The organisers must ensure that they don't fix drainage issues so your booth has that smell of a toilet at all times.
• Make sure your booth design makes it look like a bazaar, and put labels on the product so it looks like you are selling them there and then.
• Ensure that there are continuous high walls around your booth so no one can look in to it.
• Make sure your booth layout looks like an assault course for a health and safety training session - so you have a chance of building a long lasting connection with your prospect - one that includes a black eye or brusing.
• Make sure your give aways have an enormous logo on them that ruins their style, and are such an odd colour that they end up in landfill really quick.
• Have 'mints' or other open candies on your booth so that all those lovely germs pass from one visitor to the next - having wrappings on them would be too much of an extravagance.
• Don't wipe down surfaces and keep them clean, because people really like crumbs on the high tables - and make sure you don't have seats for guest at all!
• Ensure your signage is so low or so high that people who walk past have no idea who you are or what you do.
• Don't have any QR codes to link to web based content - you want them to have to type in that really long URL
• Make sure the data capture tool is so flaky that it takes 5 minutes to scan the badge.
• Make sure you have an appointment booking system that no one looks at... so when you turn up, every contact is nice and fresh, brand new and greeted with the phrase 'who are you?'

Now I have only captured a few of the ones that I experienced this year, and I am sure that you all can add to them. I also have to mention that many of the above are actually breaches of rules that IBC give to exhibitors, but of course better to ask forgiveness than permission :-).

Please do comment below on any that I have missed, and do remember that we are not here to name and shame those exhibitors - we are only here to shame them into doing better next year.

* I did look up synonyms for 'dolly birds' and all of these were much worse than this phrase, so I chose to use this one. As I said, I am shocked that any company thinks this is a good idea for any show today.

Regards

Ian Nock.