It’s the official pastime of the average attendee — inching forward in seemingly endless lines, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in cramped presentation spaces, and tapping toes in exhibit reception areas — waiting. For what? Maybe it’s a presentation that’s the talk of the trade show. Perhaps it’s a new-product demonstration everyone’s dying to see. Or, it could be a one-on-one meeting with a member of your staff. Bottom line, attendees spend a big chunk of their precious time at shows doing little more than converting oxygen into carbon dioxide.

“Waiting is frustrating, demoralizing, agonizing, aggravating, annoying, time consuming, and incredibly expensive,” notes an old advertisement for FedEx Corp. Truth is, no one likes waiting, but if you’re hosting any sort of booth activity or presentation, holding meetings in your exhibit, or distributing highly coveted giveaways, dwell time, or wait time, is as inevitable as death and taxes.

In his article, “The Psychology of Waiting Lines,” David Maister, a Boston-based consultant, author, and former Harvard Business School professor, outlines a basic principal about waiting: Occupied time feels shorter than unoccupied time. According to Maister, occupying people, or simply introducing engaging distractions while they wait, decreases their perceived wait time, resulting in a more pleasant experience for everyone involved.

Consider his example of a well-known hotel group that received complaints from guests about excessive wait times due to slow elevators. The hotel’s solution was to install mirrors outside the elevators. Why? As guests waited, they checked their appearance in the mirrors, a distraction that effectively occupied their time. The mirrors substantially reduced the number of complaints despite the fact the wait time was entirely unchanged.

Studies on line management and queue theory all show a direct connection between wait-related frustration and a person’s overall perception of the product, service, or experience he or she is waiting for. Put simply, happy, occupied trade show attendees are far more likely to become happy prospects (and ultimately happy clients) than frustrated attendees who leave your booth due to excessive wait times.

So how can you apply Maister’s principal to your exhibit? The following examples demonstrate various ways you can occupy attendees while capitalizing on dwell time, educating or entertaining prospects, or simply capturing and qualifying contact information.

In-line Entertainment
Television is the ultimate distraction, as anyone who’s tried to multitask in front of the boob-tube will tell you. So it’s no surprise that companies often turn to TV to provide while-you-wait entertainment. Countless elevators now come equipped with LCD and plasma displays that run everything from CNN to nonstop commercials. Even airports have television monitors near gates in an effort to ease the agony of waiting. Several exhibitors have also capitalized on this trend, positioning plasma screens inside their exhibits to help occupy attendees’ with so-called “in-line entertainment.”

At the 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, for example, attendees waited eagerly for up to 30 minutes to view Honda Motor Co.’s booth presentation featuring the company’s advances in robotic technology. But while attendees twiddled their thumbs waiting for Asimo, Honda’s charismatic robot spokesperson, they turned their attention to several plasma monitors. In addition to a five-minute presentation on Honda’s robotics-research history, the monitors also looped the company’s new television commercials, entertaining the captive audience, driving home key brand messages, and taking full advantage of the down time between presentations.

Fashion-design company House of Dereon, founded by designer Tina Knowles (mother of the famed Beyonce), took a similar approach at the 2006 Magic Marketplace in Las Vegas. Within the fully enclosed exhibit, visitors waited for meetings in a secluded area adjacent to a reception desk. A 42-inch plasma screen mounted on a wall behind the desk ran a video loop of interviews with Tina Knowles and her recording-star daughter. The video discussed the company’s history and creative vision, occupying clients’ time and educating them about what makes House of Dereon unique.

Conversing the Masses
In a restaurant, the entire experience is all about waiting — waiting for a table, waiting to order, waiting for your food, and waiting for the bill. Many restaurant owners instruct service staff to acknowledge guests’ wait time with comments such as, “I’ll be right with you.” According to Maister, that acknowledgement, along with the personal interaction and subsequent distraction of conversation, alleviates guests’ anxiety and gives them the impression that they’re already being served.

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and Amgen Inc. heeded Maister’s advice when preparing their joint exhibit at the 2005 American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Scientific Meeting. Their popular presentation drew more than 2,100 attendees, many of whom waited in line for more than 30 minutes for a chance to view a three-minute presentation in the Enbrel Multimedia Multisensory Theater, a buzz-worthy domed structure inside the exhibit.

The partners embraced every second of down time, as they experienced a lines-beget-lines phenomenon. According to Robert Lisicki, director of marketing for Amgen Inc., the line itself actually drew an even larger crowd. “People figured that something good must be going on inside if all those people were waiting in line for that length of time.”

Staffers capitalized on the captive audience, as sales representatives acknowledged visitors’ wait time and used that time to communicate product messaging. For example, sales reps handed out “playbills” detailing various product benefits. In addition, they conversed with waiting attendees, incorporating key talking points to continually engage them with product information. “Twenty to 30 minutes is a long time to wait in line,” Lisicki says, “but the people who were waiting in line were very approachable and willing to have conversations about the product with our sales reps.”

Disney Distractions
Walt Disney World may be the master of line management. The waiting areas are as elaborate and ornate as any other part of the amusement park, offering countless different distractions, from the well-manicured and detailed scenery, to sounds and encounters that make waiting in line half the fun of going on a ride.

Nintendo of America Inc.’s line-management techniques at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) had a similar effect, turning dwell time from an annoyance into an experience. Attendees waited as long as 4.5 hours just to enter Nintendo’s booth. Ralph Miller, executive producer of Ralph Miller Productions, the large-scale events and special-media firm hired to create media for the exhibit, says the line was the longest Nintendo has ever seen.

To keep waiting attendees engaged, Nintendo positioned four 61-inch plasma screens in a vertical orientation along an exterior exhibit wall. Each of the plasmas had a two-way interactive video and audio feed to one of four mini video studios inside the exhibit. Hired talent in three of the studios interacted with attendees waiting in line. The fourth plasma featured Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario, one of Nintendo’s signature characters and a star within the gaming industry.

Because of the interactive feed, the line hosts and attendees were able to see and hear each other and carry on conversations, just like video conferencing. For instance, one of the so-called “plasma line hosts” might get someone’s attention with, “Hey! You in the red shirt. What’s your favorite Nintendo game?” Four more plasmas inside the exhibit continued the experience, featuring pre-recorded video of the same four line hosts welcoming attendees into the space and congratulating them for surviving the long wait.

“After the line hit the four-hour-wait point, it was getting ridiculous,” Miller says. “What were people going to do for that long? Obviously, these are very loyal customers. We wanted to entertain them and ease the pain of standing in line so the wait wasn’t as unbearable as it might be otherwise.” So the Nintendo team created a second interactive component to keep people entertained and engaged, while eliminating the wait altogether for others.

“We’d have our booth staff go through the lines and ask things like, ‘Does anyone have a tattoo of a Nintendo product?’ Lo and behold, we found people with Nintendo tattoos, so we let those people move to the front of the line. It was fun, germane, engaging, and became part of the experience,” Miller says. Staffers would also randomly select people waiting in line and ask them product-related questions. If they knew the correct answers, they’d join the tattooed attendees at the front of the line.

During the show, several media representatives filmed spots in front of the line, and even interviewed waiting attendees. According to Miller, “The line became a social scene that took on a life of its own. People were asking others on the show floor, ‘Have you been in the Nintendo line yet?’ Simply giving attendees something to do made them much more engaged and open to hearing the company’s message.”

Waiting Room Only
In lieu of 61-inch plasmas and multi-million-dollar budgets, Maister notes two simple tactics companies can use to occupy attendees: paperwork and reading material. Consider how waiting rooms in hospitals, salons, and even auto-repair shops are filled with magazines, posters, brochures, and the like, all intended to keep you busy.

At the 2006 International Franchise Expo (IFE), the Soup Man franchise adopted a hybrid approach to line management that combined the in-line entertainment and waiting-room literature approaches. Made famous by the Soup Nazi character on “Seinfeld,” the Soup Man franchise is friendlier than the character’s “no soup for you” tagline suggests. In fact, at IFE, it was free soup for everyone — as long as you were willing to wait in line.

The queue of salivating attendees ran the length of the 10-by-20-foot exhibit, around a corner, and into the aisle. But those waiting for a sample-size cup of bisque, chowder, or chili were treated to a looping video of television interviews and news reports on Soup Man’s successful shops. One-page reprints of articles featuring the franchise sat on a table at the corner of the exhibit, allowing attendees to snag some reading material to keep them occupied. But unlike the magazines in a hospital waiting room, IFE attendees were encouraged to take the reading material home with them as a reminder of their booth visit, and of the franchise’s popularity.

The second waiting-room-inspired distraction is paperwork. At The Motivation Show in 2006, Prepaid Solutions USA put attendees to work filling out forms while they waited for the company’s presentation to begin. Staffers and crowd gatherers asked guests to fill out lead forms, containing questions about the attendees’ specific interests and budgets. The simple activity occupied attendees’ time, and the forms, which were collected at the end of the presentation, helped Prepaid Solutions capture and qualify more than 600 leads.

So whether you use high-tech, interactive, 61-inch “plasma line hosts” or no-tech pen-and-paper lead forms, don’t let wait time become wasted time in your company’s next exhibit. Entertain your prospects, occupy their time, and make the wait itself worth waiting for. e