In a busy exhibition environment, it can be difficult to persuade a visitor to stop and talk to you or, more importantly, remember you. Using fun, engaging content such as games or competitions really helps entice your audience on-stand, but is the impact lessened when not translated properly by your exhibition stand design? We think so. Failing to integrate visitor engagement with your stand design can damage your chances of meeting your exhibiting objectives.
We’ve looked at 3 companies who have nailed their exhibition presence with inspiring, integrated design; hit their show objectives and smashed their ROI.
At their own annual conference, CIPD wanted to involve visitors within their event marketing campaign to showcase their HR and people development credentials. They also wanted to capture the details of engaged individuals to extend the campaign after the show and to follow up with details of the brand’s offering that could be of interest.
To achieve their objectives, CIPD integrated a selfie booth onto their stand. Each visitor was asked to enter their contact details on-screen so their selfie could be emailed directly to them. Additional questions were also asked to help give CIPD an insight into formulating a separate brand campaign. The attendees photograph was taken and integrated into CIPD’s Annual Conference campaign, creating a personalised message for the visitor.
Finally, each selfie was also sent to a second screen on-stand to create a rolling mosaic, encouraging other visitors to get involved.
Over 200 people took part using the integrated selfie booth, providing CIPD with valuable information and enabling them to continue the conversation.
Exhibiting at the PLSA annual conference, BNP Paribas wanted an engaging stand that would encourage known industry contacts to visit them. They also wanted to increase dwell time so they could spend more time talking to their target audience.
As a sponsor to many major tennis tournaments, they wanted the stand to be tennis themed in design.
The designer’s response was split their stand in two; ‘the locker room’ and ‘courtside’. They used a digital game in the locker room where participants had to find the tennis ball hiding under one of three cups, while on the courtside, players took part in a physical game where they had to get beanbags through the holes of the perspex panel onto the court behind.
The two sides of the stand helped BNP Paribas to cleverly represent the preparation and the execution of the investments the company deliver for their clients.
We wanted to practice what we preach at Marketing Week Live; demonstrating the value of integrating fun engagement tools and content into our stand design to drive up visitor engagement levels.
We devised a ‘phygital’ game to entice visitors on stand called ‘Sweet Memories’ that echoed a message in our direct mail campaign. Players memorised a random selection of five retro sweets then matched the corresponding sweets physically represented on stand. An RFID scanner was used to identify their guesses and players were timed on how long it took to find all five.
Every player won a prize and were entered into a prize draw for an overall winner.
We saw record-breaking levels of engagement – an increase of 208% in the numbers of visitors playing the game, compared to our campaign the year before.
Feel inspired? Why not visit our engagement and stand design pages for more information on creating your next engaging integrated exhibition stand? You can also download our guide – ‘How to Create a Great Exhibition Brief’ to help outline what you’d like to achieve with your design. A guaranteed way to smash your next exhibiting objectives and ROI!