CHICAGO — According to key players in the events industry, a growing percentage of exhibitors are providing educational opportunities and activations to attract attendees — a trend which can enrich an event overall and raise attendee satisfaction.
Whether it is providing tennis lessons on a trade show floor or offering lectures from celebrities in their booths, there are a wealth of ways in which exhibitors are stepping up to stand out.
Trade Show Executive (TSE) spoke with professionals from the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA), IMEX and Hargrove from Encore about how exhibitor-led experiences can enhance events for all participants.
A Trend Overview with Sherrif Karamat, CAE
Sherrif Karamat, CAE, President & CEO of PCMA, explained that this trend has a robust history in the pharmaceutical space and is growing at business events in most sectors.
“That’s been a massive change over the years — it’s this integration of seamlessly interacting content, commerce and community, which makes a much more robust environment on the show floor,” Karamat said. “It’s really transforming the way a trade show looks today.”
Karamat also believes that more-immersive experiences, which allow attendees to feel like “part of a brand,” are more likely to engage younger event participants and will become an industry standard.
“This is going to get more and more important, and it’s not just about training, development or learning on the floor, but experiencing any brand. A coffee break shouldn’t be just people putting out coffee,” Karamat explained. “Could you experience a culture, for example? … It is not good enough to just show up at a trade show booth and stand there and expect that people will just come to you.”
Patty O’Daniel, DES, Sales & Customer Engagement Director at Hargrove from Encore, has also noticed exhibitor-led experiences becoming more common at events.
Exhibitor Insights from Patty O’Daniel, DES
Working with the research firm Kantar in 2023, Encore discovered that the bar has been raised to attract attendees. Like Karamat, O’Daniel believes that exhibitors need to adapt to meet their growing expectations.
O’Daniel shared that exhibitor-led experiences can attract higher quality attendees too.
“Creating activations and experiences shifts the dynamic from transactional sales to consultative sales,” O’Daniel explained. “It enables brands to add value and build deeper relationships with their customers. The results are often more qualified leads vs. a high quantity of unqualified leads. Because of the education activation, the customer equates the supplier as a qualified expert in their field.”
O’Daniel shared that at the National Recreation and Park Association Annual Conference this year, Hargrove from Encore created a U.S. Tennis Association activation that featured a live tennis court alongside a virtual reality tennis-hitting wall which offered lessons and practice drills. It was a fully customized space with diverse educational opportunities, personalized and group consultations, and a coffee bar area with tennis-themed bean bags, used for fireside chats.
Also, at the 2024 American Association of Orthodontists Annual Session, the company worked with DentalMonitoring to create a pavilion space with versatile options for delivering educational content, including demonstration zones, an in-booth theater for expert speakers and a private meeting room.
According to O’Daniel, knowing one’s target audience should be a priority when creating any experience.
“Modern professionals are seeking added value in many forms and creating flexible spaces with multiple touchpoints empowers attendees to self-select what experience benefits them most,” O’Daniel said. “As an example, Encore’s own exhibit at IMEX America 2024 … had multiple areas of engagement, including an immersive tour that educated attendees on how they can get more creative with technology at their events. It also included a theater for thought leadership and a lounge space for meetings.”
Carina Bauer, IMEX Group CEO, shared that various other exhibitors provided educational opportunities and activations at IMEX America 2024. This has become increasingly common — in 2022, the show had eight activations, and it had 11 this year.
The Benefits of Exhibitor-Led Experiences with Carina Bauer
Bauer believes that exhibitor-led experiences add value to any event, if done properly.
“On the one hand, we want to encourage it because we want to encourage our exhibitors to have more creative ways to attract people to their thought leadership, but, on the other hand, we don’t want there to be too much noise around the show floor,” Bauer explained. “Like with everything at a show of our scale, we are constantly walking a tightrope between different competing needs. At the end of the day, though, it helps to enrich the program as a whole and the experience for attendees … [and] it does enhance the overall educational program if it’s done well. In some cases, they might be able to bring in speakers that we may not know about or access, especially if they’re bringing in their own subject matter experts.”
Bauer advises exhibitors to avoid making their educational offerings too sales-oriented.
“It can’t be a sales pitch. Otherwise, you’ve got to advertise it as a presentation, a product demo or something similar. You’ve got to be very authentic about it,” Bauer explained.
Additionally, Bauer believes that exhibitors and shows of all types can consider adding exciting or immersive experiences.
“It doesn’t have to be big and expensive,” Bauer said. “There are loads of things that can be done. The most popular things still at our shows are the 360-degree photo booths … my advice is to get creative and don’t think that you’re too small to have some fun.”
