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Friday, June 19, 2009
Excite!
I'm planning on attending the Excite! show next week - several contacts and colleagues have mentioned that they are going, which is quite unusual and is probably as good an indication as anything of the need everyone feels to network furiously at the moment in an attempt to try and work out what's actually happening in the industry.
Everyone knows that Excite! is the new name for the Exhibiting Show. Any organiser knows that new names get applied to old shows only when the organiser is trying to freshen up an event which has started to falter or look tired, so this is likley to be a challenging year for the show.
The double-whammy is that a good chunk of the target audience are themselves show organisers, and they will understand that the "positive" rebranding is an acknowledgement of weakness in the product by the organiser - sort of like having a strapline of "Please come, as it was a bit rubbish last year".
To really get the buy-in of an informed and savvy audience like this a re-branding cannot afford to just focus on the name, logo, and graphic design but it also needs to spell out clearly that there have been material changes in the product as well. To be honest, whilst the cosmetic/graphic aspects are definately much fresher, I'm struggling to see much content about such material changes of content in the marketing collateral which has come my way so far...
Whilst "Excite!" definately sounds positive it is also a lot less literal than the old name, and it needs a clear and bold strapline to make it obvious to any potential new attendees that it is about the event industry - again maybe a risky strategy in the current times.
Either way, I'm still going because it's a good meeting place for a number of people I know - but it will be interesting to see if a Excite! 2009 is actually a better show for the exhibitors, or just a more catchy name for an event that just happens to be well timed for visitors to arrange to meet each other there.
Everyone knows that Excite! is the new name for the Exhibiting Show. Any organiser knows that new names get applied to old shows only when the organiser is trying to freshen up an event which has started to falter or look tired, so this is likley to be a challenging year for the show.
The double-whammy is that a good chunk of the target audience are themselves show organisers, and they will understand that the "positive" rebranding is an acknowledgement of weakness in the product by the organiser - sort of like having a strapline of "Please come, as it was a bit rubbish last year".
To really get the buy-in of an informed and savvy audience like this a re-branding cannot afford to just focus on the name, logo, and graphic design but it also needs to spell out clearly that there have been material changes in the product as well. To be honest, whilst the cosmetic/graphic aspects are definately much fresher, I'm struggling to see much content about such material changes of content in the marketing collateral which has come my way so far...
Whilst "Excite!" definately sounds positive it is also a lot less literal than the old name, and it needs a clear and bold strapline to make it obvious to any potential new attendees that it is about the event industry - again maybe a risky strategy in the current times.
Either way, I'm still going because it's a good meeting place for a number of people I know - but it will be interesting to see if a Excite! 2009 is actually a better show for the exhibitors, or just a more catchy name for an event that just happens to be well timed for visitors to arrange to meet each other there.
Labels: Excite show
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