Gong Fu Snafu

Nobody likes to find themselves in hot water at a trade show. But when your exhibit strategy features a tea ceremony, hot water is a vital requirement — and the lack thereof can leave you steamed.

I endured this steamy situation when my company, Tero International Inc., planned to use a traditional Gong Fu tea ceremony to showcase our latest international-relations training sessions at the Open for Business Expo in Cedar Rapids, IA. Gong Fu, which translates to “skills with a practice,” would be the perfect attraction in our 10-by-20-foot booth to symbolize our skills in dealing with international customs, as well as our ability to use that knowledge to build business relationships. The tea ceremony would highlight our expertise in international traditions — something we had promoted heavily before the show.

My staffers and I arrived on the show floor several hours before the 11 a.m. show opening and diligently began setting up our booth. As we applied the finishing touches, we realized that we’d forgotten a crucial piece: the burner plate to heat the water in our teakettle to the 205 degrees prescribed for the ceremony. Adding to my dilemma, the missing burner plate had been purchased at a specialty shop in Des Moines, IA, and I had little faith in finding a suitable replacement early in the morning in the middle of Iowa.

Without boiling water, we couldn’t make the tea, and everyone we’d invited before the show, not to mention the people we hoped to snag on the floor, would wonder why we had a tea ceremony with nothing to drink.

Keeping my exterior calm despite my inner panic, I suddenly remembered the coffee shop across the street where we had purchased lattés and lunch during last year’s show.

So with less than an hour to spare, I zipped across the street to the Cedar Rapids Coffee Co. and asked the owner if she had a burner to match our teakettle. While she didn’t have an exact match, she offered us a large urn she had in the back. Since it had its own internal warmer, it would keep our water at 195 degrees — close enough for our purposes. She even filled the urn for us, refusing all of our offers to pay. We thanked her profusely and carried the urn across the street to our booth, where we plugged it in, warmed up the water, and waited for a crowd to start our first ceremony.

In the end, the day went smoothly, and after each ceremony, we urged the crowd to cross the street to the Cedar Rapids Coffee Co. for their lunch and coffee needs. As a token of our gratitude, we sent a large bouquet of flowers to the coffee house along with a note saying, “Thank you for helping us out of hot water.”

— Jennifer Chittenden, client relations coordinator, Tero International Inc., Des Moines, IA

Fill in the Blank Space

Everyone looks better wearing the right size. After all, an oversized hat makes you look like a child playing dress up, and too-big shoes are strictly for clowns. So it stands to reason that your exhibit space should fit the booth that goes inside it. But less than a week before the 2006 SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security show (SANS) in Las Vegas, I suddenly realized my exhibit and floor-space sizes were a total mismatch.

I discovered the problem shortly after I placed a phone call to show management to verify what I assumed was our 10-by-10-foot exhibit space. Since the space had been ordered by a previous employee, I wanted to make sure all the I’s were dotted and the T’s were crossed. I had already made arrangements for our pop-up booth to be sent; plus, my staffing allotment — and budget — were already set for the upcoming show.

When I got show management on the phone, I found out the booth space I thought my company reserved was actually twice as big. Apparently, the previous employee had ordered a 10-by-20-foot space, and at this late stage in the game, there was no way to chop it back down to size.

With the space already paid for, my biggest concern was how lost our pop-up would look in a 10-by-20-foot space. While SANS was not our biggest show, I hated the idea of a seemingly downsized presence in a biggie-size exhibit space.

I considered using our 10-by-20-foot custom booth, which was stored in our warehouse in New Jersey. But compared to the pop-up, shipping the bigger property to Las Vegas was an additional $4,000.

I was caught between either using my 10-by-10-foot exhibit in an oversized space or spending a lot more money than the show justified.

As luck would have it, I was at another show when I discovered my exhibit space had doubled. I decided to walk the show floor and see if there were any exhibitors in 10-by-20-foot booths doing things that might give me some fresh ideas.

I soon discovered several exhibitors offering presentations to educate attendees about their place in the market instead of just displaying and pitching their products or services, which is what we normally did in our pop-up. Within a few short hours of discovering the extra booth space, I hatched a plan to fill it with a similar kind of presentation.

Fortunately, one of my booth staffers for SANS, Jeff Paddock, had done several PowerPoint presentations about our place in the market at previous events. I called Jeff and had him develop a 15-minute spiel. Next, I made sure that the pipe and drape in our booth space coordinated with our booth colors — which it did — and ordered a 42-inch flat-screen monitor and six chairs to build our presentation theater. Finally, I ordered a large laminated banner announcing our presentation to hang inside the extra 10-by-10-foot area of pipe and drape. Filling the extra space cost me only $800, rather than the extra $4,000 I would have paid to use my company’s larger custom booth.

Once we arrived at the show, we set up our pop-up in the 10-by-10-foot area next to our theater, and other than juggling some staffing shifts so Jeff could give his presentations, our original strategy went on as planned.

Rather than pitching our products and services, Jeff talked about the importance of database security and why our service is important to businesses. Attendees loved his soft-sell approach, and we filled every seat for every show with extra people standing in the aisles. In fact, our mini-theater approach was such a success that we now use it in all of our 10-by-20-foot spaces.

— Danielle Bourke, event manager, Application Security Inc., Bedford, MA