The Big Picture - March 2012 - (Page 16)

inside output inside output Tradeshows: They’re Back, Baby By Craig Miller I recently spent four days walking the 15 football ﬁelds or so that comprised the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, aka CES. Of course, I wasn’t alone. A record number of attendees – 153,000 registrants – were poking around the 3100 company exhibits. What did I learn? First, and most encouragingly, after years of cautionary tales, the tradeshow industry is back! I’m basing this not only on my CES ﬂoor-walking experience, but also on my own company’s tradeshow-related numbers: Our 2012 sales were up for CES and also for Surfaces (ﬂoor coverings), the Shot Show (shooting, hunting, outdoor), and World of Concrete. And our pre-orders are up signiﬁcantly for the Magic (fashion) and Licensing events in Las Vegas as well as Intermat Expo (building construction) in Paris and the 2013 Bauma (construction) show in Munich. If that doesn’t convince you, consider these numbers from the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR): Approximately 9000 business-to-business exhibitions take place each year in the US; those exhibitions, the group reports, result in 1.5 million exhibiting companies and about 60 million attendees. Second, there is an unimaginable quantity of wideformat digital print work at these events and, so, a great opportunity for print providers. This year’s CES show was replete with tens of millions of dollars of digital graphics. Dozens of imposing tents, all with interior as well as exterior graphics, were set up in the main parking lot. There was a continuous queue of 40-foot busses, all with fully wrapped sponsor graphics. The Las Vegas Convention Center itself, clad in steel, allowed for tens of thousands of square feet of digitally printed magnet sheeting that created huge CES murals enveloping the front of the building. The windows, too, were covered in graphics; banners and freestanding advertisements occupied every empty patch of concrete and column. The hall interior was similarly graphics-intensive. Every tradeshow has informational and directional signage, and for shows like CES this represents hundreds of signs and aisle banners. Because of the newsworthiness of CES and all of the public interest in consumer electronics, there were mini television studios in every hall with their identity and sponsors plastered on temporary walls. And every one of the 3100 exhibit booths had at least one digitally printed graphic, while some booths were completely fabricated from graphically printed material. The soft-signage connection As graphics professionals, we have a big responsibility to the tradeshow industry. We provide exhibitors with one of the most important elements of their show presence. The purpose of a booth, after all, is to entice attendees to enter the exhibit so the exhibitor can then engage them. The exhibiting company’s brand and image are at stake as well. Our contribution as print and solutions providers is a big deal. The visual graphics we produce, fabricate, and sometimes install can make or break the success of a company’s entire tradeshow e ort. It’s a huge expense for companies to exhibit. There’s the space rental, the cost of the booth itself, shipping, and the costs of transporting sta as well as housing, feeding, and paying them during the event. And keep in mind that the largest shows, like CES, are truly international, drawing companies from afar. In this year’s CES o cial show directory, for example, I counted 14 pages of companies whose name began with Shenzhen. If a company is traveling all the way from the Guangdong Province of China, they had better do a good job of presenting themselves once they get here. If not, they’ll amount to no more than a ﬂyspeck among the 197 other Shenzhens. So, at Pictographics, if an exhibitor customer is leaning toward scrimping on graphics, we’ll ask: “Why would >48 CRAIG MILLER is a principal shareholder in Las Vegas-based Pictographics, (pictographics.net) where he is also director of military and law-enforcement projects, the company’s defense-contracting division. 16 THE BIG PICTURE MARCH 2012 http://www.pictographics.net http://www.pictographics.net

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Big Picture - March 2012

The Big Picture - March 2012
Contents
InSight
Wide Angle
Up Front
Graphics on the Go
Inside Output
Superwide: Making It Big
Displays of Strength
Success and Sustainability
‘One Piece at a Time’
R+D
Job Log

The Big Picture - March 2012