Let me say “wheeewwwwww”. I’ve been at conventions for two of the last three weeks. Although it’s good to be back to catch up on some much needed sleep, it’s also a great time to reflect on these experiences.
The Fall VON Expo was (as usual) a miraculous, whirlwind, technology extravaganza. Put on by Jeff Pulver of Pulver Media (think former Vonage guy), the event was BIG, impressive and a lot of fun. Held at the new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, the event was spacious, clean, well run and …. did I say “big” already?
The Acorn Creative team has spent the past few months helping Iperia to plan for this event, including the development of all booth graphics, coming up with a tradeshow theme — a virtual reality home run derby — and polishing off all the presentation stuff; portal demo interface, tchotchke, pocket folders, sell sheets, screen savers, etc., etc. The theme this year was BASEBALL. Tied directly to the “Always Here”, warm and fuzzy, customer service idea behind the Iperia brand, the graphics of the booth took viewers back to the simple times when they were kids. Like James Earl Jones said in the movie “Field of Dreams”, “there’s always been a constant in our lives”… baseball has marked the passing of time.
Because the folks at VON had a last minute cancellation of a 20×30 booth (instead of the 20×20 that Iperia was planning), the booth could now accomodate a Hot Dog Cart. Our thinking was that the smell of the free Hebrew National Hot Dogs was another sensory layer to support the experience. What we didn’t expect was the HUGE success the cart would be among the attendees. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the food court services were charging an arm and a leg for mediocre food…. The price of the dog was a swipe of the attendee’s ID card.
As people were standing in line (over 1200 of them), it became an opportunity to answer people’s questions about Iperia services AND invite them over to view the demo.
Bottom line: Names collected for follow up were increased three fold and the number of demo presentations doubled. It’s these activities that are the precursors to new business relationships … it’s WHY we attend trade shows, yes?
