The D Word

Q. What's the fastest way to stampede a herd of exhibitors?

A. Use the "D word."

Drayage.

Its mere mention thrusts otherwise serene folks into fits of apoplexy, turning lambs into lions and Jekylls into Hydes.

"Arbitrary and greedy," they gasp. "A complete scam."

Drayage is the price a tradeshow decorator charges exhibitors to move materials from the convention center's loading dock to the exhibit space on the show floor. Charged by the "hundred weight," it increases as the weight of an exhibit does.

Exhibitors loathe the pricing scheme, wondering where it originated and why it's perpetuated.

You can blame J.W. Midgley.

Midgely was a railroad engineer in the 19th century. He's the man who instituted the "hundred weight."

The word "drayage" comes from the maritime industry, and denotes the transport of goods over a short distance, often as part of a long-distance move (for example, a pickup of goods by truck from a seaport and their delivery to an inland warehouse).

The word's also used to denote the price of the transportation.

Drayage originally meant "to transport by a sideless cart", or dray. These carts, pulled by dray horses, were used to move goods short distances (short because of the physical limitations of the dray horse). Over time, the dray horse was replaced by the delivery truck.

Pricing the service by hundred weight is a scheme that allowed operators of the various modes of transport (ships, trains, carts, etc.) to charge uniformly and treat all users fairly (farmers, for example, paid no more than ranchers, miners, or loggers to have their goods hauled). It also allowed for easy verification of the charges.

J. W. Midgley, although disavowing that he originated the practice, took credit for making the hundred weight a national standard for charging for freight hauling.

Midgley wanted to help harmonize hauling. And that's a good thing, because harmony breeds efficiency.

Runaway drayage has certainly altered the tradeshow industry, causing, most notably, exhibitors' flight to fabric. (I remember a time when US tradeshows were chock full of hardwall).

The industry players point fingers whenever runaway drayage gets mentioned. Exhibitors scapegoat decorators. Decorators scapegoat organizers. Organizers scapegoat convention centers. Everybody scapegoats labor.

But nobody scapegoats J.W. Midgley.

It's high time they did.

It's also time to put drayage into context:

• A woman once asked Picasso to sketch her on a piece of paper. The artist complied, and handed her the sketch. “That will cost you $10,000.” The woman was astounded. “Isn't $10,000 a lot for only five minutes work?" Picasso replied, “The sketch may have taken five minutes, but the learning took 30 years."
  
  
• Hospitals typically charge you $20 for an aspirin. That's because they "cost shift" constantly. They couldn't function if they didn't charge insured patients $20 for an aspirin, because their beds are filled by poor, uninsured patients, as well.
  

• Starbucks charges $3 for a small latte, but a whole pound of Arabica coffee beans costs only $1.50. When you buy a latte, you're also paying for labor, store rent, furniture, and college tuition for 4,000 employees. The beans comprise only 20% of the price.

Exhibitors, sure, you may want to squeeze runaway drayage.

But remember: when you clamp down on one side of a balloon, the other side just gets bigger.

Whistling Past the Graveyard

M&A strategist Denzil Rankine told attendees of UFI's European Conference in April the compound annual growth rate of the "core product of exhibitions"—namely, floor space—is limping along at a mere 2%.

Inflation will eat that—and more—for breakfast.

When you consider how complacent most concrete-peddling association show organizers are, the best you can say is they're "whistling past the graveyard."

The idiom has two meanings, one positive, one negative.

"Whistling past the graveyard" can mean you're displaying nonchalance in the face of danger.

Or it can mean you're clueless.

Whichever's the case, associations need to find new revenue streams to shore up concrete sales.

They can't just hope shows will return to vitality by themselves, the economy will boom, or that "Millennials will attend when they get jobs."

B2B Events Get Hip

Expect more annual B2B events to market themselves like music festivals, according to Cramer.

Meetings once held in convention center halls and hotel ballrooms will migrate outdoors and to hip, alternative venues, offering inspired music and entertainment.

"Festivalizing" your B2B event means adding not only rad surroundings and music, but the other hallmarks of a big festival: frictionless registration, entry and wayfinding; a "choose-your-own-adventure" schedule; post-modern structures; exotic food and beverage; cause-related happy hours; playrooms and coffee houses; co-created artworks; social media extravaganzas; and event themes that celebrate coolness, community and creativity,

Festivalization's dual goals are "reinvigorating attendee bases and attracting millennial prospects, who prefer experiences, touchpoints and connections at events," Cramer says.

B2B event planners are riding a wave. According to Billboard, 32 million Americans attended a large music festival last year.

The Truth about Trade Shows

Last evening, I watched an old rerun of The X Files. The entire episode is a flashback to a time before FBI Agents Mulder and Scully are partners, and is set inside a trade show in Baltimore in the year 1989.

It was a kick to see how many everyday objects have changed in a quarter century. Men's suits. Women's dresses. Cameras. Computers. Telephones.

But not trade shows.

The imaginary 1989 trade show looked just like a 2017 trade show.

The truth about trade shows: they're lodged in the '80s. We still need them now, but we need them to deliver something new.

With buyers' ranks thinning, web content exploding, and pre-released products the norm, '80s-style trade shows are obsolete.

Yes, we still need to meet face-to-face, take the pulse, and wave the flag, but why "flash back" to do so?

Maybe it's time for organizers to flash forward, to think badgeless and boothless and begin to craft experiences matched to today's need to gather and do business.

The answers are out there.

CMO, Want to Avoid Extinction?

No CMO wants to be left on the sidelines. Sidestepping the confines of traditional marketing to deliver a more relevant and integrated customer experience will ensure the future of the CMO on the digital playing field.

— Accenture White Paper

Dear CMO:

Afraid you'll be banished to the North Pole?

Ready to declare every conventional marketing tactic passé?

Well, be warned: your rush to "embrace digital" is abominable.

The reason's simple.

Just like people who use an online dating service, B2B customers use digital to eliminate you from consideration. They don't use it to start a relationship.

Relationships come from face-to-face.

And relationships are the wellspring of growth, the most valuable off-balance-sheet asset your company has.

So why on earth would you "sidestep" face-to-face?

Do you want to avoid extinction—or accelerate it?

Corporate Wedding Planners Strike Back

An "aspirational" ad campaign of the late 1960s proclaimed, "You've come a long way, baby."

It took event planners a while to catch up.

But they assuredly have, as made clear by Kerry Smith and Dan Hanover's 200-page Experiential Marketing: Secrets, Strategies, and Success Stories from the World's Greatest Brands.

No longer "corporate wedding planners," experiential marketers in the 2010s have become marketing kingpins—the drivers and integrators of all the marketing "silos."

"Live experiences have ignited a marketing revolution in which brands around the world have committed to upgrading their marketing strategies, budgets, and platforms," Smith and Hanover write. "And that revolution has driven a much-needed evolution of the marketing channels and silos used by brands for 50 years."

The heart of the book lies in Chapter Four, "Anatomy of an Experiential Marketing Campaign," where the authors describe the 11 "Experiential Pillars" underpinning the channel.

"As with a great recipe in which the ingredients are blended together to create a unique flavor, these pillars work together to optimize engagement and will allow you to achieve the brand-building, value-creating, clutter-braking power of experiential marketing," they write.

They base the chapter not on hard knocks or gut feelings, but an analysis of the 1,000+ winners of the Ex Awards, the annual awards competition for live events they've produced since 2002. And the events they consider take not one form, but many, from PR stunts, in-store events and road shows, to trade shows, user conferences and sales meetings.

Reading Experiential Marketing tempted me to update my recent post, "My 5 All-Time Favorite Books on Marketing," because the book has the same quality as the "mind-blowing game-changers" I listed there.

No matter how much you've dabbled in event production, the authors give you a palpable sense while you're reading the book that you're on a path of discovery; that you're like one of those "Pioneers of Television" who's in at the inception of a powerful new medium with a yet-understood capacity to build large audiences and fundamentally reshape worldviews.

Buy it. Read it.


You've come a long way baby! by JustAnotherJester

Foxy Photo Sharing

Cybersecurity pros are clever. It's not easy to outfox them.

But Brian Reed has the animal instinct.

Reed is CMO of the early-stage social media security company ZeroFOX. His firm protects innocents from becoming prey to hackers, spammers and scammers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and dozens of other social media platforms.

Reed has tamed social to romance the cybersecurity pros attending mega events like Black Hat, SecTor and RSA Conference, and transform them into advocates for his scrappy new brand.

"Our participation in security-industry events like Black Hat and RSA represents a substantial business investment," Reed says. "So we have to do interesting things wrapped around those events to achieve the maximum results."

Reed believes social media today is all about pictures.

So before a recent event, he bought a Snapchat Geofilter, branded it, and hired a troupe of actors to pose with attendees for snapshots. Thousands of snapshots.

"Social media engagement is now largely photo-driven," Reed says. "That's why we make sure to arrange our participation at all large events around photogenic spots, bring backdrops and props, hire and costume an actor as our mascot, and have photographers at the ready."

Reed customized the Snapchat Geofilter with his company's graphics and tagline for the event, "They've weaponized social media." He also embedded hashtags in the filter, and in all his other social media outreach, to drive sharing.

"We leverage social media at all events where the audience is heavily Millennial," Reed says. "Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook all allow geotagging and audience engagement."

At past events, he has also deployed video walls on site, to billboard the thousands of posts generated. And when the organizer has its own video walls for social media, Reed's team leverages them heavily, to drive on-screen promotion of his brand.

Reed's antics aren't contained to the convention center. At a Skyfall-themed after-party at Black Hat, he set up photo booths replete with a cast of James Bond characters, who hammed it up while attendees posed with them for shots (photos, not Tequila). The photo booths automatically added hashtags to every photo and printed funny signs that displayed the hashtags. Attendees could pose holding the signs, and further drive sharing and engagement.

"I like using social around events for a number of reasons," Reed says.

"First, it's purely user-generated content, so your investment in creative amounts to buying a filter. The rest comes from team engagement and creativity.

"Second, social extends the value and shelf-life of the events you participate in. A conventioneer actually will engage with your brand and help you grow it.

"Third, while you're aiming to reach non-attendees, attendees feel good about your brand, because you help them make new connections on the floor. 'I saw you with James Bond last night," a total stranger will walk up and say to someone. "That was awesome!"'

Reed has advice for convention center and hotel operators, based on his recent successes.

ZeroFOX's obsession with photo-sharing means the marketers at the company now choose booth locations, popup meetings and activities, and party rooms based on how photogenic the backgrounds are.

"There's no reason a venue's signage, lobby art or building features couldn't be part of that background, even if it's just part of a portable photo backdrop," Reed says.

"When I do site walkthroughs, I'm always looking at the visuals for social photo engagement. I encourage all event professionals to consider this a whole new way to market your space. Venues should become more open to thinking about the cross-promotional opportunities we can bring them."

NOTE: You can find Brian Reed (aka ReedOnTheRun) on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

Digital and Events: They're Cousins

Yes, we get it: digital's hip and events are square.

But they're cousins, identical cousins all the way. One pair of matching bookends, different as night and day.

B2B CMOs know they spend 50 cents of every marketing dollar on events.

But they don't recognize, in reality, they spend even more.

John Hall, CEO of Influence & Company, recently told me an ever-growing portion his clients' digital spend directly supports customer engagement through events (before, during and after).

B2B CMOs are using online channels to drive face-to-face results; they simply don't assign that spend to the events.

That means CMOs are oblivious to the true picture. Spending surveys don't capture it either.

In this family, the brash, hip child is gets all the parents' attention, while the shy and dutiful one goes quietly about her business. What a wild duet!

Live Events: Wanamaker's Worry and the Pedigree Problem

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.

John Wanamaker

B2B CMOs spend more than 50 cents of every dollar on live events.

But they don't share Wanamaker's Worry.

They never ask, how much of my money is wasted? They simply boost event budgets when sales are up; and slash those budgets when sales are down.

Event managers will gripe all day about spotty crowds, the cost of drayage, and the bungling of lead follow-up. But the foolhardy spending begins and ends with CMOs—specifically, with their pedigrees.

CMOs ascend to their lofty jobs through predictable routes. Advertising. Digital. PR. Research. Product management. Sales. 

Have you ever heard of a CMO who once held the job of event manager at his—or any—company?

The consequence of their pedigrees is: CMOs bring blinders to the job, when it comes to live events.

It's why they don't share Wanamaker's Worry.

Why Face-to-Face Works

As we all know from Star Trek, the strongest force in the universe is gravity.

The second strongest may be mimicry.

Mimicry is the reason face-to-face works—better than broadcast, direct, email, mobile, outdoor, packaging, print, PR, social, sponsorships, telephone, web, wearables, word-of-mouth, or any other marketing channel.

Like gravity, mimicry is an inborn and inescapable "hidden force" compelling us to behave in predictable ways. 

Mimicry makes us automatically imitate the expressions, gestures, postures, actions and language of people around us.

And mimicry generates trust between parties. It's why couples who share the same manner of speech are 50% more likely to date; why servers who repeat their customers' orders get 70% bigger tips; and why negotiators who imitate their opponents' postures are 500% more likely to win.

Because it builds trust, mimicry "shapes professional success," says Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger in Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior. 

"Mimicry facilitates social interaction because it generates rapport," Berger says. "Like a social glue, mimicry binds us and bonds us together. Rather than 'us versus them,' when someone behaves the same way we do, we start to see ourselves as more interconnected. closer and more interdependent. All without even realizing it."

Whenever we go face-to-face, mimicry's our default behavior. 

So it's just natural this vast hidden persuader works its black magic at conferences and trade shows, deleting distrust and making us all members of one federation.

CAPTAIN'S LOG: Happy 50th, Star Trek. Live long and prosper.

Preaching to the Choir

Today's post was contributed by Michael J. Hatch. Mike is managing director of DARE, a one-day conference that helps CMOs leverage the spend on B2B events.

So often we hear from event-industry leaders and organizations how powerful and important face-to-face is. 

More often than not, though, they are preaching to the choir.

While attending a family wedding in Detroit recently, I heard that message delivered loud and clear in a most unexpected setting—a Sunday morning church service.

Here's an excerpt from the sermon delivered by Rick Barry, Middle School Pastor, on August 7 to the congregation of Oak Pointe Church in Plymouth, Michigan:

"I want to pause and talk directly to my middle schoolers and millennials here this morning about my sixth and final point about communications and relationships. 

"Put down your electronics! Face to face is the best way to communicate. 

"In our technology-driven world, with texting, phones and emailing so prevalent, we need to make sure we are committing to communicating face to face.

"Hands down, face to face is by far the best and most effective way to communicate with anyone. Because in face-to-face communication, we see all of the non-verbals that are missed in digital communication: we see a person's eyes; see their smile and facial expressions; hear the tone of their voice; see different emotions that are being felt; and the body language that you never see, hear or feel when texting or emailing. 

"If you find yourself hiding behind a text or email, fight that urge and try to go face to face with the person you want and need to communicate with."

After hearing this message from the pulpit it occurred to me that the event industry does not need a big-budget ad campaign to get our "power of face to face" message to mainstream America. 

Rather, we should adopt a completely new guerilla marketing strategy.

All we need to do is rally the preachers of America to deliver the message about the power of face-to-face communication and relationship-building to the millennials in church every Sunday—allowing our message to take root and rise throughout the land, and into the halls of Congress and the board rooms of Corporate America.

Event-industry Brothers and Sisters, can I get an Amen?

POSTSCRIPT BY BOB JAMES: With a little push, Mike's idea is could catch fire. Clergy often turn to online sources for sermons. Were the event industry to submit a sermon like Rick Barry's to these websites, who knows how quickly the message might spread? Influencer marketing worked wonders for the gas industry. Why not the event industry? Now you're cooking with gas!

DISCLOSURE: I am a part owner of DARE.

Complaining isn't a Strategy

When the world changes around you and when it changes against you—what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind—you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn't a strategy.

Jeff Bezos

A new survey by Sydney-based The Exhibit Company shows 91% of trade show exhibitors "struggle with leads." Respondents identified six component challenges:

• Attracting visitors to their booths
• Attracting the right ones
• Engaging them
• Qualifying them
• Tracking them
• Following up

While they grouse mightily, many exhibitors hold onto the very practices that assure failure. Most:

• Pick shows wrong for their products 
• Set no objectives, or unmeasurable ones
• Fail to promote their presence
• Mount unwelcoming exhibits
• Muddle their message
• Assign booth duty to novice salespeople
• Forget to turn the salespeople into a team
• Turn off or simply ignore passers-by
• Produce distracting stunts
• Make giveaways a focal point
• Annoy visitors with stupid questions
• Neglect to ask strategic questions
• Refuse to automate lead capture
• Dump leads on salespeople after the event
• Allow leads to go un-nurtured

Exhibitors who bungle their part are like the substance abuser. 

Each one of the bad habits is easy to kick, but the abuser's addicted to her self-pity.

Complaining isn't a strategy.

Events: Working in a Coal Mine

This week I asked a savvy agency head, Cary Hatch, if B2B marketers were really as deep down into F2F as many event-industry people claim.

Her response: "Yes, they're into events, for the sales. Events are the currency of business today."

B2B agency head Gary Slack has told me that, with the exception of digital, his own clients devote more dollars to events than any other channel.

That exuberance is confirmed by Outsells' research analyst Michael Balsam: “Digital is still king, but events play a large role when you need to touch and feel things as part of the sales process."

And according to content agency Brafton's Molly Buccini, three of four B2B marketers boosted their event spend this year.

"When it comes to bridging the gap between digital and traditional marketing activities, events are an easy way to combine forces," she says.

Something's amiss, however—despite the spend-fest. As B2B marketers continue to sink more into events, they plan and execute them without objectives, strategy, or cognizance of corporate goals.

They've done so forever, as B2B marketing research analyst Julian Archer notes: "We at SiriusDecisions currently see a familiar pattern of too much emphasis being placed upon the activity of an event and not enough on outcome."

I ask, as the lyric to "Working in a Coal Mine" does, how long can this go on?

The Young and the Badgeless

To event-industry old salts, working an event with unofficial credentials is known as suitcasing.

To the unwashed, it's known as crashing, hacking, lurking and lobbyconning.

"There is a long tradition of those who simply show up for conferences, wallets closed," Jane Levere reports in The New York Times.

"But for young entrepreneurs on limited budgets, particularly in the technology field, the importance of the personal introduction has only increased. Just don’t mention the fee."

While I think suitcasing's a nice problem to have, consultant David Nour considers it symptomatic of a dying event.

The handwriting's on the wall when attendees refuse to pay for credentials, Nour says. "And its message is bleak."

Producers routinely come down on suitcasers in Stalinesque fashion.

One producer calls them bottom-feeders "mooching off everyone else who has spent marketing dollars to be at the show."

But suitcasers may not see themselves as mooching, doing damage to their own reputations, or even harming the event.

One suitcaser in fact told Levere he was an evangelist. "I think I’m adding value by spreading the word," he said. "A lot of people most likely attended the conference because I mentioned it.”

Where do you come down? How do you come down?

5 Game Designs Guaranteed to Boost Event Traffic

Almost always, games score big as traffic-boosters at events.

The reasons why are well understood: games satisfy attendees’ innate needs to compete, win recognition, and bring home swag.

But today—with a slew of tech-enabled amusements at our fingertips—games are undergoing a renaissance at events.

To create a memorable and buzz-worthy game, you need a design that's aligned with your goals and that attendees will find alluring. Here are some design alternatives:

Skills competition. Suppose you want to increase traffic at some specific location. You could design a game that challenges attendees’ physical or mental skills—anything from hitting a target to taking a quiz. An attendee could play by completing an action (answering a trivia question, for example), for which she earns a token. The number of tokens awarded for repeat plays could increase as the difficulty of the challenge does. After playing, the attendee redeems all the tokens won for a matching-level prize by visiting a winner’s station.

Treasure hunt. Suppose you want to offer exhibitors a traffic-building sponsorship opportunity. You could design an old-fashioned treasure hunt. Attendees could earn points toward prizes by visiting a series of exhibits, where each participating sponsor rewards them with tokens. After the series of visits, the attendees would visit a winner's station, where they would enter a prize drawing by redeeming their tokens.

Game show. Suppose you want attendees to actively listen, while you communicate a lot of information. You could train a presenter to act as MC, and design a game show that challenges players’ knowledge. Attendees would play and, based on their game-show scores, be awarded variously valued tokens, which they could redeem for the corresponding prizes.

Mission. Suppose you want to collect market research from attendees. You could send them on a “mission.” Under this scenario, attendees would earn tokens by visiting a series of kiosks, where they complete your research surveys. Players who take part in the mission (even the ones who don’t complete it) would receive real-time recognition on a leaderboard and through social-media posts, as well as collecting tokens they can redeem for rewards.

Chance. Suppose you want to draw a crowd and maximize word-of-mouth throughout the event. You could design a game of chance. Attendees who play would win tokens worth a various number of points that they could redeem for the corresponding prizes.

Bye Bye Love

ToutApp CEO "TK" Towhead Kader, who prides himself on "operational ruthlessness," is through with events; or, at least, with other people's events (OPE).

"If you’re attending any of the sales conferences this year, you may notice a distinct absence of a ToutApp booth," he says.

OPE have proven a heart-breaker. "As we looked back at our marketing spend in the past year, we couldn’t help but notice how paid speaking arrangements, booths, and sponsorships accounted for a lot of our spend but not a lot of attribution to closed business or real pipeline," TK says.

The CEO is diverting his company's spend on OPE "to things that have worked 10x better."

What are those things? Proprietary events (PE).

"We’ll invest in our own events in association with people we love," TK says.

"With all the money we save, we’ll spend that money to invest back into our product, pay our employees at competitive rates, and net-net, be an operationally ruthless company."

Event Sponsorship: On the Trash Heap?

"Event sponsorship does not belong to the 2010s," says Julius Solaris on Event Manager Blog.

If you produce events and your notion of sponsorship amounts to little more than "brand exposure," your notion's due for a check-up.

Indeed, past due.

"Sponsorships featuring logos, eyeballs and impressions don’t carry the same value they once did," says Velvet Chainsaw's Wendy Holliday.

Sponsorships that don't pluck heartstrings, produce leads, and persist beyond the event belong on the trash heap. (Two sure signs your sponsorships are outdated, according to Velvet Chainsaw: 35% or more go unsold; 75% or more aren't renewed.)

The $64,000 question you must tackle: Why should any company buy your sponsorship, when it can stage its own event? How can you compete against that?

Solaris provides the answer: A proprietary event is inherently lopsided. No matter how you shake it, the private event is biased—and yours isn't.

If you have a genuine reputation for authority, you have an insurmountable advantage.

"Some events are born because they are the expression of a community," Solaris says. "They are a movement. 

"These events are built from the bottom up, their main objective is to get together, be entertained, network and learn. 

"Sponsors should fight with each other to sponsor such events."

Childish Tchotchkes

Want to win over a jaded audience at your next trade show?

"Appeal to the inner child," says marketing consultant Jill Amerie.

Amerie recounts a midnight film screening at this year's SXSW.

A house full of film journalists sat waiting for Keanu, an action-comedy about a kitten, to finally begin. The mood was sullen and bitter.

"Then something interesting happened," Amerie says. 

"The comedic team of Key and Peele came on stage with a basket of toy kittens. They started throwing the stuffed animals into the audience, and suddenly, those tired, grouchy journalists were jumping to catch them like a bunch of bridesmaids going after the wedding bouquet. 

"A lot of those kittens will end up going to the children of those attendees, but it’s a safe bet that a significant number of them will end up in their offices, too."

Hot Spots

B2B events are hot.

Freeman (my employer) has just released a compilation of statistics that proves it. Among the findings:

• 225 million customers attend 1.8 million events annually

• $565 billion is spent on events annually

• 20% of a marketer's budget is devoted to events (the single largest spend)

• 48% of brands see an ROI on events from 3:1 to 5:1; 41% see even better

• 93% of executives say events increase their chance to close deals

• 98% of customers say events increase their purchase intent

• 79% of brands will boost their involvement in events this year

Vitalizing Trade Events

Trade shows have "outgrown" learning, networking and party-going, says Holly Barker in Event Manager Blog.

Trend-setting organizers and exhibitors are re-caffeinating mature events with these five ingredients:

VIP treatment. They're treating attendees to "all-star access" to special events and lavishing them with "gifts of information."

Personalization. They're tailoring touch-points by "listening to attendees and creating a customized plan that appeals to their interests and needs on an individual level."  Attendee feedback is essential to the effort.

Data. They're letting data drive new ideas for deepening attendee engagement, as well as personalization.

Experience. They're abandoning "old school" insistence that bigger's always better and focusing instead on little things, like themed tchotchkes, better signage and handsomer staff shirts, to deliver a memorable experience. "You want to look like a complete, professionally pulled together package," Barker says.

Un-booths. They're turning exhibits into teen hangouts where attendees can "chill and mingle with booth staff." Food, fun, artworks and "blinky giveaways" make un-booths happening places.

Vitalizing an event takes study and a little chutzpah, Barker says. 

"It never hurts to test a new idea and see if it picks up or is a total flop. The best way to be a trendsetter is to get out there and just do it!"