EVENT AT A GLANCE Objective: Increase the sense of community among Exhibitor Show attendees. Strategy: Transform the little-used registration area into The Square: a “town square” concept. Tactics: Create various gathering spaces, entertaining distractions, and educational elements. Results: Exhibit-hall dwell time, booth visits, and leads are all up; time spent at New Product Showcase increased by 60 percent; bookstore sales increased 55 percent.

ommunity is the Holy Grail for today’s marketers. Everyone wants it. Everyone tries to build it. Few actually achieve it. Audiences are quick to see through artifice, and community is often kaput before it even forms.

Not so at Exhibitor Show, Exhibitor Magazine Group’s 20-year-old annual conference and expo for trade show and event-marketing professionals. Here, strangers become collaborative colleagues, exchanging ideas, forming connections, and creating that elusive sense of community.

Behind these connections is a carefully crafted environment designed to give attendees a jumping-off point to a community-building conversation. It is called The Square, and it is a gathering space for attendees to connect, learn about each other and their shared industry, be entertained, shop, and even rest for a while.

Framing the square

The Square was born out of a seemingly tactical objective: to make better use of the real estate dedicated to the registration area. Visit the registration area of any event on day one and you’re likely to see busy staff tending to throngs of attendees. Visit that same registration area any time thereafter and chances are you won’t see much of anything at all. As Martin Smith, CEO of Benton Harbor, MI,-based Ethnometrics, who has studied traffic flow and timing at Exhibitor Show for four years, discovered, the show’s registration space was typically only used until noon on the second day of the event.

As the Exhibitor Show team prepped for the 2006 event and contemplated this post-registration desert, Lee Knight, Exhibitor Magazine Group CEO, saw the perfect opportunity to blend his two objectives: first, to redesign the registration real estate, and second, to nurture an attendee community by celebrating their common experience as trade show professionals.

“We’ve always been really interested in how we can help the attendees better connect with each other,” Knight says. “We know that the more people network, the more likely they are to feel that they had a valuable experience. The trick has always been how to help them do that.”

Heading into event-design planning for 2006, the Exhibitor Show team’s objective was clear — transform the registration area from an administrative space to an environment that welcomes attendees for the duration of the event.

A Shared Experience

At the heart of this new environment, which debuted at Exhibitor Show 2006, were Exhibitor’s three keys to community: origins, culture, and learning. The environment offered a combination of these elements, indicative of community, and the hallmarks of the trade show world in particular. Or as Knight calls it, “a landscape of common interests.”

Origins. To let attendees know where their fellow show-goers called home, The Square featured a 13-by-8-foot, lighted world map. All attendees were encouraged to post a marker on their current home base. A photo booth positioned next to the map gave attendees a chance to snap a picture and stick it on the map by their hometown.

Visitors to The Square could feed their heads in a bookstore featuring titles by industry experts and show speakers, as well as connect with fellow show-goers in a lounge and e-center.

Culture. To incorporate a sense of shared culture, The Square featured two galleries. In one, attendees examined trade show photos dating back to the early 1900s, to see how much their industry has changed over time. The second showcased all of the posters from past Exhibitor Shows. To directly involve visitors in the display, a voting program invited attendees to name their favorite among the poster collection.

Learning. Learning and idea exchange is at the heart of any community. Visitors to The Square could feed their heads in a bookstore featuring titles by industry experts and show speakers, as well as connect with fellow show-goers in a lounge and e-center where they could share their common problems and proven best practices in an informal way, outside the scope of the event’s seminar program.

Adding to the organic nature of The Square, foot paths were loosely defined. Walking through the space “became an experience of discovery,” Knight says, equating it to modern hospitality design where lobbies meander and reception desks are no longer front and center.

Organic discovery and connections are great for people who find it easy to strike up a conversation with a new face. But for those less inclined to join a conversation on their own, Exhibitor developed its “Dinner With Strangers” (DWS) program.

Exhibitor Show’s first foray into guided community building, DWS was launched one year before The Square to great success. Show attendees signed up on boards posted in the registration area to have dinner with small groups of fellow attendees. Convinced of the program’s appeal, Exhibitor offered DWS again in 2006, with the sign-up board positioned as part of the newly launched Square. The bad news: It fizzled. Smith’s research identified poor positioning of the sign-up board as the culprit. “It was right at the front door,” Smith says. “That’s a transition zone. People don’t look there.”

This discovery led to one of The Square’s defining features, and the one that sets it apart from most exhibition environments: its complete flexibility. “Marty Smith once said to me that he sees exhibitors notoriously willing to live with poor design,” Knight says. “If something isn’t working and you can see that on day one of an event, why suffer with it for another three days?”

Knight’s answer: Put it on wheels. Today, many elements within The Square are mobile. From the caster-mounted displays to the draggable furnishings, if the Exhibitor team sees a stalled spot in The Square they can now fix it fast.

Changing Shape

Anecdotal evidence from year one revealed that The Square was a huge hit with attendees. “It seemed to be a magnet for people,” says Fred O’Keefe, a retired event management company owner. “People have a tendency at trade shows to say, ‘Where can we meet?’ They grope for a place that’s common knowledge. The Square is that central place.” Bringing The Square back for the 2007 Exhibitor Show was a no-brainer. But the concept evolved from year one to year two. In addition to the layout changes afforded by the caster-mounted displays, the world map got bigger (it grew to 30-feet-by-8-feet), and instead of a gallery of posters and photos, the featured exhibit, called “10 Ideas That Changed the Trade Show Industry,” directly supported the cultural and learning hallmarks of the Exhibitor community. Attendees again interacted with the information, adding their own opinions about the industry’s most transformational innovations and ideas to a blackboard positioned inside the gallery.

“People have a tendency at trade shows to say, ‘Where can we meet?’ They grope for a place that’s common knowledge. The Square is that central place.”

Exhibitor’s conference advisory board was even inspired to get involved the second year, volunteering to hang out in The Square as a sort of unofficial welcoming committee, greeting show attendees and answering questions.

Looking forward, Dee Silfies, Exhibitor Conferences’ chief learning strategist, says some things about The Square will never change. “We have a higher percentage of people who are new to the show than returning attendees every year,” she says. “So we have to maintain the basic services that they need, and then we can switch out the things that enhance the experience. There will always be a registration area and a way for attendees to communicate. We’d like to always offer a bookstore, and the world map will probably always be there. But we’ll bring different entertainment in, and a new gallery. The look and feel can and should change, but we’ll always focus on what needs to be there.”

Heading into the 2008 event, Exhibitor already is planning how The Square’s evolution will continue. In one key change, the 2008 focus will shift from looking back at industry history to a timely and topical look ahead to the new wave of Green, or “eco,” exhibiting. But at least one necessary change will be a challenge, as Exhibitor’s event success changes the venue footprint. Due to the amount of exhibit space sold for the 2008 show, The Square will lose some square footage.

Success, Squared

While The Square wasn’t designed as a meeting space, per se, the lounge area and the second-year addition of bean bag chairs brought what Silfies calls an important element for community — convenience. “It’s a place attendees can go between their exhibit hall experience and their conference experience,” she says. “It’s so easy to say, ‘I’ll meet you in The Square.’ It’s a great, recognizable focal point.”

And what’s convenient for attendees is good for show business. “We know that people stay longer in the exhibit hall if they have a way to take a break there,” Knight says. Smith’s research backs up the benefits of The Square. “There’s a strong connection between the time people spend and the amount of purchase. The longer they spend in an environment, the more they buy,” he says. “Attendees are on the floor longer, and they’re looking at other things longer.”

Exhibit-hall dwell time, booth visits, and lead counts have also increased. Smith thinks such increases are directly related to The Square. “The trend we’re seeing at trade shows is that interaction rates are down. Anything you can do to improve interaction is good — and The Square increases interaction between people, so their time spent at the show is greater. It’s a networking event, a connection to kindred spirits, and a chance to become part of a larger community.” e