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Monday, June 29, 2009
Excite! and Taste of London
In the last week I've been to both Excite! and Taste of London - 2 very different events, but with something of note at each.
Excite! seemed very much an event for stand builders and contractors to pick up the latest gizmos for enhancing stand look and feel - so if I went, maybe the rebranding worked, as it probably wasn't really for me. However it was also notable for the presence of a good smattering of exhibition organisers walking around, clearly looking for some networking on a warm summer afternoon - so maybe everyone else felt the same?
The organisers had done a good job of nicely dressing up the Brompton Road entrance of EC&O, although there were no signs at the Earls Court Station entrance to the EC&O complex, which seemed a bit odd given the event's website had (of course) simply stated "Earls Court" as the location, not the "we might as well just say it's much smaller than Confex" Brompton Hall!
Excite!'s (is that how you add an 's to the end of it??) 3pm seminars were pretty thinly attended - but glancing in at them it seemed that this may be as much to do with content as timing. Maybe worth thinking that it could be better to have nothing happening than to have "fillers" or to put exhibitors on stage where they will only get disappointed by lack of attendance.
Taste was its usual busy, rain-threatened self, although it was notable for the lack of a few top-end restaurants and a few more mid-market food and beverage brands than in previous years. No Gordon Ramsay, despite him having headlined the launch edition of "Taste" at Christmas - maybe the downside of a solus deal at ExCeL, or just belt tightening at the Ramsay empire?
We were fortunate in that we managed to grab a table right in the middle of the exhibitor area in a section which had been branded quite heavily by British Airways, and which as a result no-one had dared to sit in - presumably on the assumption that it was a VIP-only area (like the other 2 BA-branded facilities at the show. Great for us, but a useful reminder that there needs to be a coherent "fit" in the way you select sponsors and attach them to areas of the show. In this case the visitors clearly had come to the venue with an understanding that BA were associated with bits of the show you could only get into by paying more, and no-one wanted the embarrassment of being chucked out of this particular area! I suppose it showed how effective the pre-marketing had been in establishing BA as a "VIP" brand at Taste, but whether Brand Events sale steam would be bold enough to show BA the pictures of a deserted BA-branded area as evidence of the success of their campaign is another matter...
The other interesting thing to extrapolate from Taste was that the busy restaurant stands were definitely those serving the biggest portions, rather than the most sophisticated and upscale restaurants. Whether this is a symptom of a decline in audience poshness (I hesitate to say "quality!"), a marker for the entire restaurant business or just basic supply & demand economics in action I can't say, but it's a timely reminder that your customers have a keen nose (almost literally in this case) for value, no matter how you try to dress it up.
Excite! seemed very much an event for stand builders and contractors to pick up the latest gizmos for enhancing stand look and feel - so if I went, maybe the rebranding worked, as it probably wasn't really for me. However it was also notable for the presence of a good smattering of exhibition organisers walking around, clearly looking for some networking on a warm summer afternoon - so maybe everyone else felt the same?
The organisers had done a good job of nicely dressing up the Brompton Road entrance of EC&O, although there were no signs at the Earls Court Station entrance to the EC&O complex, which seemed a bit odd given the event's website had (of course) simply stated "Earls Court" as the location, not the "we might as well just say it's much smaller than Confex" Brompton Hall!
Excite!'s (is that how you add an 's to the end of it??) 3pm seminars were pretty thinly attended - but glancing in at them it seemed that this may be as much to do with content as timing. Maybe worth thinking that it could be better to have nothing happening than to have "fillers" or to put exhibitors on stage where they will only get disappointed by lack of attendance.
Taste was its usual busy, rain-threatened self, although it was notable for the lack of a few top-end restaurants and a few more mid-market food and beverage brands than in previous years. No Gordon Ramsay, despite him having headlined the launch edition of "Taste" at Christmas - maybe the downside of a solus deal at ExCeL, or just belt tightening at the Ramsay empire?
We were fortunate in that we managed to grab a table right in the middle of the exhibitor area in a section which had been branded quite heavily by British Airways, and which as a result no-one had dared to sit in - presumably on the assumption that it was a VIP-only area (like the other 2 BA-branded facilities at the show. Great for us, but a useful reminder that there needs to be a coherent "fit" in the way you select sponsors and attach them to areas of the show. In this case the visitors clearly had come to the venue with an understanding that BA were associated with bits of the show you could only get into by paying more, and no-one wanted the embarrassment of being chucked out of this particular area! I suppose it showed how effective the pre-marketing had been in establishing BA as a "VIP" brand at Taste, but whether Brand Events sale steam would be bold enough to show BA the pictures of a deserted BA-branded area as evidence of the success of their campaign is another matter...
The other interesting thing to extrapolate from Taste was that the busy restaurant stands were definitely those serving the biggest portions, rather than the most sophisticated and upscale restaurants. Whether this is a symptom of a decline in audience poshness (I hesitate to say "quality!"), a marker for the entire restaurant business or just basic supply & demand economics in action I can't say, but it's a timely reminder that your customers have a keen nose (almost literally in this case) for value, no matter how you try to dress it up.
Labels: Excite Exhibition, Taste of London
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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