More Booth Than I Bargained For

Getting free extra floor space at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) might sound like a dream come true in these rough economic times. But if that space comes without an equally enlarged exhibit to fill it, the dream can quickly become a nightmarish rush to find a solution.

Prior to CES 2009, my predecessor suggested that we partner with another exhibitor whose products complemented our line of cases and covers for personal electronic devices, such as MP3 players, laptops, and cell phones. The idea was that by using our combined buying power to purchase a bigger booth at the show, we’d increase visibility for ourselves and our partner company. So when I took over as the director of marketing at Speck Products Inc. in Palo Alto, CA, my boss asked me to pursue a partnership arrangement with a particular company that made camera bags and accessories.

I contacted my counterparts at the company, and together we negotiated an arrangement whereby my company would abandon its original 20-by-30-foot space, and purchase a 40-by-50-foot space for both companies. We would retain a 30-by-40-foot slice of the enlarged footprint, and our partner would get the rest. Since CES has strict rules about partnering in booth spaces, I quickly set about filling out the reams of paperwork show management required to get our arrangement approved.

As I kept plugging along on the paperwork, we hit our first snag: Our partner company suddenly found itself in the midst of a buyout by Lowepro Worldwide. As a result, my counterparts moved slowly in making decisions and getting their part of the paperwork finished due to the extra layer of bureaucracy created by the buyout.

Once we’d finished completing all the necessary forms, we hit our second snag: We found out that the only 40-by-50-foot space available was stuck among the big home-stereo crowd full of loud and even bigger booths. Still, taking this as a positive, we figured maybe our quiet little accessories booth would stand out among the group and get a lot of attention.

So with the booth space purchased and my partners on board, I figured it’d be smooth sailing until the show opened in January.

Not long after I ordered our show services, however, things really went to hell in a hand basket. It seems the buyout of our booth partners had led to a change in exhibiting philosophy. Unbeknownst to me, Lowepro was having doubts. Despite the fact that the booth had been paid for, the company wasn’t sure it wanted its new subsidiary on the show floor at CES. In retrospect, I should have seen this as a giant red flag, but at the time I just assumed Lowepro’s noncommittal attitude was indicative of slow decision-making and unfinished booth plans.

As the months until the show turned into weeks, I experienced one form of foot dragging after another from our partner. Then, just five weeks before the show, my counterpart told me the company’s new management had finally made a decision: They were not going to exhibit at CES. And since they’d already purchased the nonrefundable booth space with us, they decided to write off the money they’d spent on floor space and walk away from our agreement, leaving me with the entire 2,000-square-foot space.

I was stunned. With barely more than a month until the biggest show in our industry, I now found myself with a 40-by-50-foot booth space, but only a 30-by-40-foot exhibit with which to fill it. Yeah, I’d definitely stand out on the show floor among those big home-stereo exhibits. But with almost half of my booth space empty, I’d stand out like a mule among a herd of thoroughbreds. So with a ton of booth space to fill and barely any time to do it, I went to my exhibit designer to begin brainstorming possible solutions.

The first order of business was to reconfigure our exhibit. The original plan had called for the booth to be split by the two companies using a back wall on our side as a divider. But now, that back wall slicing through the floor space would make it look like we’d ordered the wrong-sized footprint.

My exhibit house quickly devised some relatively simple solutions to reposition our existing structures, moving that bisecting wall to one edge of the exhibit, extending a planned fashion runway full of mannequins toting our products along the new back wall, and giving the whole space a bit more flow thanks to the repositioned wall. The exhibit house then started submitting change orders to show services for placement of electrical outlets and trusses.

Meanwhile, I began exploring various ways to fill the extra booth space. The good news was that the extra space was free. The bad news was if we didn’t find a way to make it look like a planned part of our exhibit, our booth would likely end up looking disorganized — and that was not the positive impression I hoped to communicate to attendees at the show.

As I was hunting down possible solutions to fill our extra space, I started looking over the plans for our original exhibit. In doing so, I realized that while I liked a lot of the individual elements from the design (the meeting rooms, the product displays, etc.), the booth wasn’t really a true reflection of our brand.

As a company full of creative people located in Northern California, we’re a pretty laid-back bunch. Everyone dresses casually, like they’re ready to go hang out with some buddies — we even have “Beer Bash” Fridays at the office. So to kill two birds with one stone, we decided to turn our extra booth space into a cool hangout that typified the climate of our company.

With management’s OK to spend a little extra cash, we designed an exhibit lounge complete with California microbrews on tap, high pub-style tables, and a dance floor made of those square tiles that light up when you step on them. Then we added foosball and air-hockey tables, creating the kind of place where people would love to kick back and relax. The addition of a few signs around our exhibit called attention to the games, brew, and basic good time we were offering. So in the middle of all the thumping home-stereo booths blasting beats like a nightclub, we’d created a relaxing hangout that felt like a comforting corner bar.

But best of all, we’d taken the negative of all that dead space and turned it into a showcase of who we are as a company, which really seemed to resonate with corporate clients. Sure it cost a little more, but when the alternative was to look like the biggest loser on the show floor, becoming the cool, new kid on the block was well worth it.

— Brent Baer, director of marketing, Speck Products Inc., Palo Alto, CA