Four great trade show tips

Evan Schuman (TPRWS 39)  of StorefrontBacktalk.com has spent a lot of time at trade shows lately and he sent us these four tips for getting the most out of media contacts. We like them all, but we think #3 and #4 are particularly good!

Evan writes:

1. Most interviews today are done on the phone and some even via E-mail. The art of how to get the most out of an in-person demo and ESPECIALLY a tradeshow demo (where you have the space luxury of your booth or your demo suite). Demos and interactive capabilities should be top choices. Backups can be truly relaxed conversations about trends. This is NOT where you want to whip out the slides and do a 30-minute overview.
2. Lose the tunnel vision when setting up meetings. Those “want to meet at Big Tradeshow next week?” calls are huge opportunities for stories and coverage and I have seen tons lost due to tunnel vision. They ask and focus on “are you going to be attending X and Y?” with a backup of “Do you have time to meet at the show?” If the answer to either question is “no,” the call ends. What a waste of a contact with a reporter!
3.  Walk the aisles and go into rival booths. Crazy, you say? Not at all. How many times have execs tried to say why their product is so much better than the competition? At a tradeshow, you can make that case 1000 percent more effectively. Start in your booth and show how a particular task is done and how easy and effective it is. Then walk one minute down the aisle to your rival’s booth and have the reporter try to do the same thing with them? Of course, this only if your product is truly better in some way, but if it is, it’s an amazingly powerful tactic that can only be done at a tradeshow.
4. The commissary-like lunch. Last year, there was a vendor COO who did one of the most impressive PR tactics I’ve ever seen. We went down to the ultra-crowded lunch place at the Javits and grabbed sandwiches and looked for a table with space. He was trying to make the point that IT people cared about XXXXX a lot more than they did about YYYYY, which was a huge change. His eyes then lit and he told me to select any table. When we sat down, he knew that there would be at least one IT manager (and probably a lot more than one) sitting there. He brought the topic up and asked the table about it and they agreed with him. Given that I chose the table, there’s no way this could have been pre-arranged. It was a remarkably powerful way to make his point. And, yes, it could only have been done at a tradeshow.

Why you should never give an unrehearsed demo to a journalist with a video camera

Scott Kirsner (TPRWS episode 31) blogs about a disastrous live demo by an executive at Nuance Communications, one of the biggest players in speech recognition. The demo went so badly that the exec posted a follow-up on YouTube explaining what went wrong. A lot of reporters carry video cameras these days, so know what you’re doing before you agree to let them switch those devices on!

31: Scott Kirsner talks shop

This week, Paul and Dave are joined by Scott Kirsner, a Boston Globe columnist, freelance writer, blogger and conference organizer. As a writer who’s had significant experience in both mainstream and new media, Scott understands the power of each to shape opinion in different ways.Scott sees greater convergence happening between newspapers and citizen journalists, but believes newspapers still have to come up the learning curve in understanding the unique characteristics of Internet content. PR people are skilled at pitching him as a print reporter, he says, but pitches tuned to his blog are almost non-existent. For every 250 print pitches, there’s one blog pitch. This is an opportunity missed. PR still doesn’t give bloggers the attention they merit.

Marketers can adopt new media to understand and engage with their markets better, Scott believes. Start by reading Cluetrain Manifesto. Then stop talking at your customers and start asking them for comments and feedback. You can leverage inexpensive tools like online video to tell people about innovative work your company is doing or to showcase interesting people. Scott’s book, The Future of Web Video, can help you there.

Get the podcast here. (16:51)