HIGH POINT, N.C. — Genesis Exhibits, which specializes in custom exhibit design and experiential marketing, recently launched a no-charge, AI-powered consulting solution to help professionals with every phase of the exhibitor journey — from booth design to staffing to marketing. Trade Show Maestro leverages OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform to deliver insights based on decades of expertise from seasoned industry experts, including Genesis Exhibits’ CEO and President, Glenn Diehl, and Al Mercuro, the company’s Strategic Marketing and Client Engagement Advisor.
According to Mercuro, it is this specialized knowledge that differentiates Trade Show Maestro from ChatGPT.
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“Trade Show Maestro is like an assistant to a trade show manager,” Mercuro explained. “While ChatGPT is all purposed, this is focused on trade shows, so it gets to the point quicker and gives information that’s more accurate.”
Addressing Industry Challenges
Mercuro says that Genesis Exhibits created Trade Show Maestro in response to certain industry changes in recent years — not the least of which being staffing shortages that occurred in the post-COVID-19 climate. In addition to many experienced professionals leaving the industry, novices with degrees in event planning may not have been specifically taught about trade show management. This leads to a host of other issues, such as exhibiting companies not knowing how much it costs to design booths and what type of lead times are realistic.
“Trade Show Maestro was developed to help those who don’t have experience, but we also felt with companies being shorthanded, even experienced professionals could use assistance,” Mercuro said.
A Symphony of Solutions
One of the ways that Trade Show Maestro provides assistance is by generating sketches and preliminary renderings of booths. By entering a series of prompts, users are able to create designs based on their objectives, brand identity, and audience — which acts as a starting point for planning conversations.
Also, the program can help organizations determine which events they should participate in based on their industry and goals, as well as the metrics from different shows. This goes a long way toward ensuring that exhibitors get a good return on their investments.
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“Trade show managers need to know if a show will work for them. Often in the past, exhibitors used to go to shows and find out afterwards that it wasn’t the right show for them,” Mercuro said. “This will help them pick shows better by giving them a better idea of the results.”
Trade Show Maestro also gives users a better idea of how to effectively promote their business before and after a show — which, unfortunately, tends to fall through the cracks.
“You can’t always rely on the show management to draw traffic to your booth. You have to come up with ways of doing that, but a lot of new exhibitors don’t know that and they wonder why nobody came by their booth,” said Mercuro. “And then, not following up on leads afterwards is like a deadly sin, but the amount of exhibitors that don’t follow up on the leads they get at a show is ridiculously high.”
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