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Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Moving the goalposts (well, walls...)
Last week I went to 3 IT shows at London's Earls Court - Internet World, Infosecurity and the Helpdesk & IT Support show.
All of them were buzzing - at least 2 of them have already announced that attendance was in fact up year-on-year, which is great news all round, and seems to confirm that market-leading events (which these three are) will do well in a climate like the current one.
However, visitor numbers alone can't always keep the confidence of exhibitors on the up each year - the size of the show itself is a much more important indicator for confidence, if only because you can actually see it quite easily - if a hall gets cut out, or a wall is moved in, this is a lot more visible than a 5% +/- change in attendance.
Given all three are IT events and thus operate in markets where a high rate of exhibitor consolidation and churn is a fact of life, and where the "new business" to keep the shows growing comes largely from VC-funded IT startups or early-stage companies who use the show to invest their marketing funds in a bid to build market share and profile... and there are clearly a few less of these companies around right now! Given this, I would strongly suspect that all three of them must have seen a decline in sold m2 this year.
So - would this "shrinking" counterbalance the increased attendance, and serve to undermine exhibitor confidence, even though the show would be in fact better (more visitors to go round, and less other exhibitors to share them with?).
Well, absolutely not. Because - for one reason or another - all three shows had changed the halls they were held in since the last edition. Totally different shaped halls, a different exhibitor layout, and therefore making a like-for-like comparison of net sold space was practically impossible even for a seasoned old expo hack like me. Any average exhibitor stood no chance of comparing this years show with the last edition.
In the current economic climate, changing venue may well be attractive for commercial reasons - as almost all venues will be offering keener deals to steal business from each other. But the shows I saw last seek also illustrate really well that organisers shouldn't underestimate the power of a new venue, or a new floorplan layout, to improve - or even just shake up - your exhibitors perception of the show as well.
All of them were buzzing - at least 2 of them have already announced that attendance was in fact up year-on-year, which is great news all round, and seems to confirm that market-leading events (which these three are) will do well in a climate like the current one.
However, visitor numbers alone can't always keep the confidence of exhibitors on the up each year - the size of the show itself is a much more important indicator for confidence, if only because you can actually see it quite easily - if a hall gets cut out, or a wall is moved in, this is a lot more visible than a 5% +/- change in attendance.
Given all three are IT events and thus operate in markets where a high rate of exhibitor consolidation and churn is a fact of life, and where the "new business" to keep the shows growing comes largely from VC-funded IT startups or early-stage companies who use the show to invest their marketing funds in a bid to build market share and profile... and there are clearly a few less of these companies around right now! Given this, I would strongly suspect that all three of them must have seen a decline in sold m2 this year.
So - would this "shrinking" counterbalance the increased attendance, and serve to undermine exhibitor confidence, even though the show would be in fact better (more visitors to go round, and less other exhibitors to share them with?).
Well, absolutely not. Because - for one reason or another - all three shows had changed the halls they were held in since the last edition. Totally different shaped halls, a different exhibitor layout, and therefore making a like-for-like comparison of net sold space was practically impossible even for a seasoned old expo hack like me. Any average exhibitor stood no chance of comparing this years show with the last edition.
In the current economic climate, changing venue may well be attractive for commercial reasons - as almost all venues will be offering keener deals to steal business from each other. But the shows I saw last seek also illustrate really well that organisers shouldn't underestimate the power of a new venue, or a new floorplan layout, to improve - or even just shake up - your exhibitors perception of the show as well.
Labels: venue change
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