Over the last few months I have been gathering research for the new 2010 version of my eBook, The Secret of Achieving Brilliant Returns at Your Next Event: a Guide to Maximizing Your ROI and ROO.  The new version will be released in mid-September.  In my research, I have have stumbled upon the Verse Group.  They were in involved in an important three year research study for the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF).  The Exhibit Surveys folks were also involved in that groundbreaking research.

Earlier this year, The Verse Group released a report which is titled: Rebuilding brands: a study of CMO priorities in 2010. The objective of the report was to “understand how corporate CMOs are reinventing marketing in response to a fast changing economy.”

What is on the CMO mind has a direct correlation to what take place on the trade show floor.  So for my audience, I thought I would share a few of the highlights from this report.

Below are the conclusions made from this report:

Conclusions and implications

• Corporations cut back too far on marketing in 2008 and 2009 – and are now seeing the impact in weaker brands.

• There is real opportunity for corporations to gain a lasting competitive advantage by moving quickly to re-invigorate their brands.

– Not everyone can or will seize the day. In many cases they still need to make the case to their CEOs.

• To succeed in today’s dynamic business environment, CMOs must reinvent marketing. They need more flexibility, accountability and coherence across digital and traditional media platforms.

– CMOs can’t expect to reinvigorate their brands using the same old brand positioning methodologies that worked in the past.

• CMOs see narrative and metaphor as key elements in re-inventing marketing.

– But it won’t be easy to shift from the brand positioning approach because they are not aware of the breakthrough new methodologies that are, in fact, being used by some leading corporations.

On Page 10 of this report is a chart that denotes the top priorities of a CMO.  How well does this line up with your organization’s mandates?

I am always curious – is this research valid for your organization?  What are you experiencing that is similar or different to the findings I have shared here?  How have the cutbacks impacted your exhibit program?

To obtain a copy of this valuable report, click here.

My dear friend, Francis Friedman of Time & Place Strategies, has a LinkedIn group – Learn How to Make Your Tradeshows, Conferences, and Events More Profitable.  Over the past few months a fluid conversation has been taking place around the topic of helping a 10 x10 exhibitor.

Francis original question was:

Helping the 10X10 exhibitor succeed

The small 10X10 exhibitor makes up a lot of floor area in tradeshows and events. They are the backbone of our industry yet they tend to struggle to see an effective ROI for their efforts. What tips, tricks, resources and pragmatic advice can we offer to help the 10X10 exhibitor succeed?

There are 37 thoughtful comments.  One in particular stood out and I wanted to share it with you.  It is from Dan Gilbraith from Solutionist.

I wrote and article for this type of client: 10 Strategies for Trade Show Success:

1. You have 6-8 seconds to capture somebody’s attention and gain their interest as they walk by. A lot of type and details on your graphics is not going to grab their attentions. Put that information in the literature you pass out.

2. If a visitors walks past your booth and pauses, ENGAGE! That is their invitation for you to engage them in conversation.

3. Small talk wastes their time and your time. Get to the point once you engage. “Good afternoon! What interests you about my wonderful offering?” (insert your offering in place of “wonderful offering”)

4. Don’t use important graphics below waist level on your display. Nobody’s eyes ever get that far down when they are passing by. A table or visitors’ bags are at that level anyway.

5. Always use additional lighting and pay for electricity if available. Don’t be fooled into thinking the exhibit hall’s overhead lighting will be bright enough. It never is. Visitors are attracted to a well lighted booth. It gives a feeling of being bright and cheery.

6. Never sit down! It sends a message that you don’t want to be bothered. Be sure to wear comfortable shoes because standing and working and exhibit can be exhausting.

7. Don’t leave your table at the front of your booth. Move it off to the side to create a space where visitors feel invited in. A table left in front tends to create a jam up of people in front of the booth and causes other visitors to be concerned only with trying to get around the jam instead of looking at your booth.

8. Take two different types of giveaways. Use a less expensive, but effective, giveaway for the freebie vultures. These are the people that come by your booth looking for the free giveaway. Don’t totally discount these people because the may actually just be trying to get your information and the giveaway will cause them to think of you whenever they use it. The second giveaway should be something a little nicer. It is a reward and thank you for a visitor stopping and engaging in genuine interested conversation regarding your product. You definitely want to give them a reason to remember you.

9. Prior to the show, send out a teaser piece to entice targeted prospects to track you down at the show. The piece will tell them where you are located and why your offering will help them. And most of all, let them know about the free gift they will receive when they stop by.

10. This may be the most important piece of advice to take away from this article. FOLLOW UP, FOLLOW UP, FOLLOW UP! The whole reason you went to the trade show is to make a sale or gain a qualified and interested prospect! They are no longer a cold call. At worst, the are now a warm lead if not a hot lead.

Check out the other comments on this topic by clicking here.

In a recent blog post on The Tradeshow Coach website, Susan Friedmann shared this great idea and I wanted to pass it on to you.

Business headshots make a hit trade show giveaway.

In chatting with you about trade show giveaways, I’ve encouraged you to get your money’s worth by placing value in whatever you choose as a trade show memento, by avoiding gimmicks and trinkets that end up decorating landfills, and by providing something that your busy clients and potential customers truly want and need. Something they will remember you for and that will put your company in the front row of their thinking when considering services and products such as yours.

The world is a blur of business entities. Entrepreneurs understand that thanks to personalized marketing forums such as social media, the individual counts. So much of contemporary business is carried on between people who never meet face to face that it’s beneficial to let your customers “see” you. Nothing achieves that better than a professional headshot, just like actors use in their portfolios.

A headshot makes you human, visible, real.

Not just a cyberspace entity. But who’s got time to track down a decent photographer, go to his studio, sit for a series of shots and wait for duplicates once the “right” pose is identified? Time is money and schedules are packed.

Enter one of the best giveaways I’ve seen: the headshot photo session in situ at your trade show booth. Thanks to my son, Dov, a professional photographer (www.dovfriedmannphotography.com), for suggesting this; it makes sense and it’s a savvy idea!

Team up with a photographer who does excellent business portraits, and have them present at your booth to shoot free headshots as your trade show giveaway. You’ll save people time and money, provide them with a truly useful business tool and they’ll never forget you!

Written by Susan A. Friedmann, CSP, The Tradeshow Coach, Lake Placid, NY, internationally recognized expert working with companies to increase their profitability at tradeshows. Author: “Riches in Niches: How to Make it BIG in a small Market” and “Meeting & Event Planning for Dummies.” www.thetradeshowcoach.com & www.richesinniches.com

In a previous blog post I shared that there is a treasure trove of great material housed on the 4imprint site under the category “Blue Papers” [you find them at the bottom of the landing page].  Today I want to crack open the Blue Paper which discusses Sensory Marketing.  So let me highlight a few of the Blue Paper’s points and then you can go over to the site and download your own copy.

The definition of sensory marketing from the report:

Sensory branding is based on the idea that we are most likely to form, retain and revisit memory when all five senses are engaged. By going beyond the traditional marketing media of sight and (sometimes) sound, brands can establish a stronger and longer-lasting emotional connection with consumers.

In studies, groups exposed to multi-sensory environments always outperform those in uni-sensory environments. Their recall is better all around—in quantity of    information retained, clarity and duration.  What’s more, sensory information can affect consumer habits, such as restaurant turnover or  purchasing. Marketers are taking heed.

Sound

Sound, for example, has the power to impact our mood and sway our buying habits. Researchers have found that the pace of background music affects customer perceptions of wait time, spending and turnover in stores and restaurants.

Fast music decreases spending in a retail environment, but increases turnover in restaurants. For restaurants more concerned with increasing the spend-per-customer ratio, slower music creates longer dining times, leading to a 29 percent increase in the average bill according to one experiment.

Touch

Our hands are an important link between our brains and the world. In fact, as humans we have more tactile receptors in our little fingers alone than we do on our entire back.  These receptors help us explore objects in our surroundings. When we encounter a pleasant touch, the brain releases a hormone called oxytocin, leading to feelings of well-being and calm.

In research terms, this sense of touch is referred to as our haptic sense. Researchers have found that shoppers who touch a product are more likely to purchase, even as it relates to impulse buys. They’ve also found, logically, that the ability to touch a product increases our confidence in the item’s quality.

Scent

Smells stimulate certain areas of the brain responsible for creating emotions and memories. The human nose can identify and recall as many as 10,000 scents and as much as 75 percent of our emotions are generated by what we smell.
Out of all the senses, smell is the only one with a direct link to the brain. As Dr. John Medina explains in his bestseller Brain Rules, “Every other sensory system must send a signal to the thalamus and ask permission to connect to the rest of the brain … Smell
signals bypass the thalamus and go right to their brainy destinations.”

Moreover, these smells instantly trigger messages in the limbic system, the part of the brain that contains keys to emotion, lust, perception and imagination. As C. Russell Brumfield, author of Whiff! writes, “The result is immediate: When we smell, we feel.”

The 12 page Blue Paper concludes with this remark:

All in all, the senses influence our emotions and decision-making. Touch, smell, taste, sound, and the look of a product all play an important role in our perceptions, attitudes and consumption of a product. Understanding those roles provides a valuable advantage in today’s marketplace.

Now I am curious, how have you been using sensory marketing in your exhibits?  I would be very pleased to share your success stories on this blog!

Welcome Carrie Freeman Parsons and team to the event blog world!!  It will be nice to have your voice among ours.

Have you noticed that their are many blogs in the event world?  In case you have not discovered this resource,  Alltop has lists of blogs in our industry.  Let me share with you a partial screen shot of their page and a link to it for you to further explore.

Association Management

Trade Shows

Event Planning

If you have been around the internet very long you get the opportunity of being presented with staged product launches which occur every few weeks.  I am on several internet guru’s lists whereby I can assess what is happening, learn from them and where appropriate use some of my learnings for this site.

For the last few weeks the Mind Movies 2.0 folks have been following a classic model where by they provide quality content to whet your appetite for the actual product.  They have conducted interviews with personal development leaders about the use of visualization to achieve your goals.  This normally runs over a 2 – 3 week period where they are using classic marketing tactics to position the offering so that you whip out your credit card and buy the product when it is offered.

Let me share I have been interested in personal development for years and use various techniques to aid my growth and achieve my goals. I have attended various week-end workshops, studied and read many books on the topic of personal and professional growth.

The premise of what Mind Movies 2.0 is offering is quite appealing to me and I was excited about the product.  In fact prior to the launch I was off collecting various pictures of what I want to bring into my life via the manifestation process.  The interview Ryan Higgins [the creator of Mind Movies 2.0] had with John Asseraf [personal development guru] was a particular interest in that John share the scientific background on how our brains work and the importance of feeding it the correct material, i.e. positive images so that they can be brought into existence.  Everything starts at the thought level and thoughts become things.

Last week they finally announced what the cost of the product would be – $97.00.  Actually not a bad price I thought.  So I was one of the thousands of folks who bought the product.  I have no idea of how many people actually bought the product but I bet it was a very large number.

So I buy something last Thursday and here it is Tuesday morning – 5 full days and I am not able to use what I bought.

I have been told via an email that there is a technical issue.  A quote from the email:

We have your information noted and are working to fix the known bug specific to what you’re experiencing. Once the problem has been solved we’ll certainly update you at that time.

My problem is that once you have created the movie and they have “processed” it, it freezes when you replay it.  One would think they would have tested this to the hilt so that no one would have an issue or problem with this main feature of the product.

I did see on Facebook that someone had successfully made their Mind Movie and had posted it.  So it has worked for one or two people.

The response from their customer service has been slow.  In fact I thought that they might not have been working over the week-end, but in this email I just received stated they had been working over the week-end.  If they are just getting around to me, then there have been many folks who have had issues with this new product.

I have tried to search Twitter to see if anyone else is experiencing problems and I cannot find the correct hashtag or search term to find the right group.  All I see are folks touting the product.

My gut is telling me I am not the lone ranger – there are others who are not experiencing what they bought.

Here is the last customer service email – tell me if I am being too harsh with my blog post and opinions.

Hi,

Thank you for your email.

We love your enthusiasm and your support of Mind Movies.

In the last few days thousands of you have purchased Mind Movies 2.0 and in turn have created and downloaded thousands of Mind Movies.

We’ve been receiving loads of emails with thoughts, suggestions, thanks, and technical questions.

We appreciate all of these emails, and ask for your patience as we work through each and every one of them.

Your email has been received and will be responded to asap, so please refrain from sending follow up emails or phone calls on the same topic, as this bogs down the support system and slows us down in responding to you.

We are also aware that some users are experiencing trouble downloading their Mind Movies.

Our software engineers are focused on this issue, and will have a solution to you very shortly.

Thank you so much for your patience and have a wonderful day.

Kind Regards,

The Mind Movies Support Team

First of all, in my opinion it is too generic.  They say “We love your enthusiasm and your support of Mind Movies.”  Well my tone in the customer service request was not particularity enthusiastic – it was perplexed and on the frustrated side.

So if you were in their shoes – how would you handle disgruntled customers?

They have have had thousands of people who have purchased at product at $97.00, so they have made hundreds of thousands, maybe millions and yet they cannot get this technical issue resolved.  And I am being told to wait.  Who do they think they are – Apple?

Thanks for listening to my frustration.  I will let you know how this issue gets resolved and what all I learn from it.

Contrast In Customer Service

This is a striking contrast.  I ordered a small bouquet from ProFlowers to be delivered today.  There was a problem with the quality of the flowers and they are substituting a better arrangement and refunding me half of what I paid!!  Here is a portion of their email to me:

The A Little Sunshine you ordered has been replaced with 100 Blooms of Peruvian Lilies. It will still arrive on the delivery date you selected (8/10/2010). We made this change because the A Little Sunshine did not meet our quality standards. Please know that this is an extremely rare occurrence, and that we are making this change only to ensure that a gift arrives on the date you requested. As a matter of principle, we believe it is better to get a gift there on time, than to delay delivery and perhaps miss an important occasion.

My original bouquet is priced at $19.99 and is shown here:

And they are replacing it with a $39.98 arrangement:

Plus refunding half of my total bill – that is quality service in my opinion.

Now it needs to be noted that there is a big difference the two products, one is an information product and the other is physical.  But the way it was handled shows that the Pro Flowers have their act together in terms of customer service.  It appears to be a well oiled machine.  ProFlowers has been in business for years and has refined the way they handle their customers.

Will I want to do business with ProFlowers in the future based on this experience?  The answer is a resounding YES!!

I am sure some of these technical issues and other snafus that the Mind Movies 2.0 folks are currently experiencing are beyond what they prepared for in their launch.  And there are lessons for all of us.

My experience and technical issues may be unique and I am a sample of one.  Well actually I do know of another person who is experiencing issue – a dear friend I talked into getting this product.  Stay tuned for updates on how this gets resolved.

This morning in my daily update from Fast Company I was reading the story on “Social Networking Affects Brains Like Falling in Love.”  The title peaked my interest.  It is a great article that I hope you take the time to read.

The article started with:

Neuroeconomist Paul Zak has discovered, for the first time, that social networking triggers the release of the generosity-trust chemical in our brains. And that should be a wake-up call for every company.

He has a very short video I would like to share with you.

How is your company nurturing trust with your customer and prospects?

Please read the full article here and then let’s discuss the ramifications here on this blog.