When it comes to grass-roots partnering programs, Rusty Taphous reigns supreme. The exhibit and marketing coordinator for Vita-Mix Corp., a blender manufacturer based in Cleveland, Taphous trades the use of his blenders for exhibitors’ drink mixes at 200 trade shows each year — all in an effort to create mass brand and product awareness.

In 1997, beverage-mix companies began contacting Taphous shortly before major trade shows at which Vita-Mix exhibited. They wanted to borrow his blenders to prepare in-exhibit samples of their products for attendees. In exchange, they offered to tout his blenders and supply beverage mixes for Vita-Mix to use during its in-booth blender demonstrations at the show.

After a few successful partnering experiences, Taphous started scanning pre-show exhibitor lists for other beverage-mix companies with which he could arrange similar partnerships. Since then, Taphous’ partnering prowess has evolved to the point that he now ships 30 to 75 extra blenders along with his exhibit to each show. He and his booth staff deliver up to three or four blenders per booth to participating partners before the shows and pick them up afterwards — a routine task that equates to a mini-meeting between Vita-Mix salespeople and mix-company staffers, i.e. potential customers.

At a typical show, 15 to 25 booths tout Vita-Mix blenders and use them to blend their drinks. Taphous has even shipped blenders to exhibitors at shows that Vita-Mix doesn’t attend. “Even if we are not at the show, our blenders are out there working for us,” Taphous says.

But if you’re thinking about developing a similar quid-pro-quo partnership, you don’t necessarily have to go it alone; consider enlisting the help of your exhibit house. Deckel & Moneypenny Exhibits, a Louisville, KY,-based exhibit house, barters on behalf of its clients, rather than itself.

“We cross pollinate our clients in a sort of ‘you’ve got your chocolate in my peanut butter’ way,” says design director Steve Deckel. For example, at the Kitchen/Bath Industry Show & Conference, D&M client GE Appliances needs to show its appliances in a kitchen setting, while Rev-A-Shelf, another D&M client, which makes custom storage and organizing products, needs appliances to fill its product-display kitchens.

D&M barters a trade, where GE provides appliances for Rev-A-Shelf’s exhibit, and Rev-A-Shelf provides kitchens for GE’s exhibit. In addition to providing no-cost contexts for its clients’ products, D&M takes the partner approach a step further. Each exhibit features in-booth signage near the gratis products, promoting the partner company and its booth number, forming a mutually-beneficial relationship where everyone involved comes out a winner.

How do you cut exhibit costs and double channel-partner sales at the same time? If you’re Karen Carey, CTSM, you develop a lucrative partner program that increases awareness and strengthens partner relationships.

In 2003, Carey, event manager at Secure Computing Corp., a provider of Internet-security software, faced a marketing budget that was quickly dwindling away to other departments, such as research and development. Because the marketing department wasn’t yet able to justify the ROI on its trade shows and events, the CFO wanted to reallocate the money to develop products and hire more salespeople to generate sales and awareness. Thus, Carey had to cut her exhibit spending or find new ways to supplement her budget.

So to beef up her belly-up budget, Carey developed a partnership plan that immediately brought in cold hard cash — and strengthened channel-partner relationships as a welcomed but unexpected side effect.

“We had just launched the ‘Year of the Channel’ campaign at our sales conference, and salespeople were charged with recruiting channel partners, which are companies who sell related security products,” Carey says. “So I decided to take advantage of these new partners for the 2004 RSA Conference in San Francisco.”

Carey contacted 10 channel-partner representatives, hoping to convince three of them to staff the 20-by-20-foot booth alongside her staff for each day of the three-day show. In exchange for $1,500, she offered them a copy of the leads taken while they were in the booth, along with in-booth signage featuring their company and permission to hand out their marketing collateral in the booth.

As she waited to see if any partners would bite, she contacted RSA show management to obtain approval for her strategy. While full-blown dual-exhibitor partnerships typically aren’t allowed at most shows unless this exception is written into the original contract, RSA regulations stated that such partnerships would be considered on an individual basis. Thus, RSA approved Carey’s request, likely because only one representative from another company would be in her exhibit each day, as opposed to a slew of non-exhibiting company reps staked out for days on end.

With Carey’s one e-mail to 10 partners, she filled all of her staffing slots and raked in $4,500 to offset her RSA exhibiting costs. Plus, Carey’s partnering solution had no adverse effects on the booth’s productivity, as 2004 lead counts doubled compared to the previous year, and within two months of the show, a $199,000 sale was made as a direct result of the show.

Carey attributes the success to increased resources. “With the addition of the partners following up on leads, our sales through channel partners doubled between 2003 and 2004.”

Furthermore, Carey says the increased at-show partnership contact generated increased awareness on the show floor and created word-of-mouth awareness.

Since the program’s 2004 launch, Carey has implemented the program in 60 percent of her shows, enlisting the help of 50 partners.

Going in to the 2006 Kitchen/Bath Industry Show and Conference, public-relations firm Kleber and Associates faced the welcome, first-time challenge of having nine clients at the same show. Getting jaded media to pay attention to one exhibiting client is hard enough, as exhibitors often tout fluffy faux news rather than real, cutting-edge products and technological innovations. K&A’s marketing challenge, however, was multiplied by nine.

“We were in a sticky situation with nine clients to promote equally and effectively. So, in an effort to promote our company and our clients, we decided to unify all nine of them under our umbrella,” says Leah Peterson, senior account executive at K&A. “We decided to create an activity that would drive attendees to all nine of our clients — a strategy that would also show the media how well-versed we are in the industry, as we have nine clients at the same show. We brainstormed for ways to unify the group and settled on something that would make people feel good, and for most of us in the office, that something is usually food. Then we brainstormed for a light, relatively inexpensive food with a touch of class, and settled on gourmet popcorn.” With one giant pop, K&A’s hybrid partner program banded its clients together in an unexpected partnership that generated awareness for everyone involved.

The program’s premise was that media representatives would visit each of K&A’s nine clients, collecting a different flavor of gourmet popcorn — such as chili lime, butter cinnamon, chocolate nut, and caramel apple — and of course, chatting with each of them about their product offerings. Prior to the show, K&A targeted 650 media reps with a custom 6-by-8-inch box featuring K&A’s corporate-green color. A belly band explained that “Big news is popping up all over the trade show floor!”

Inside the box, recipients found a piece of velum that read “Look past the fluff. Find the real stuff.” Below the velum, they discovered handfuls of popcorn as well as a 12-page brochure reading “The only fluff you’ll find with our clients is delicious gourmet popcorn.” The brochure’s cover explained the program’s premise, while each of the 10 inside pages promoted one of the nine clients, with one page devoted to K&A.

“The strategy certainly alerted the media to nine exhibitors with which they may not have otherwise engaged,” Peterson says. “Plus, it allowed us to show our clients that we’re using out-of-the-box strategies, literally, to promote them individually and as a group.”

Plop a home-theater projector in a 40-by-40-foot exhibit and what do you have? Aside from a near-empty booth, you’ve got a product without a context. Minus the wiring, audio, screen, and home-theater environment, your projector is merely a black box full of electronics. Worse yet, without a context, you’ve got lifeless space and a missed opportunity to create a memorable sensory experience.

For Runco International Inc., manufacturer of video displays and technologies, this dead-space experience simply wouldn’t do — especially not at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which draws more than 150,000 attendees annually. Plus, Runco wanted installers, dealers, and consumers to understand how easily its projectors integrate with other electronic products — a task even the best black box couldn’t handle alone.

Creating a home-theater context, however, is easier said than done. With high-quality audio systems running more than $100,000, not to mention interiors, specialized seating, and screens totaling roughly $85,000, the cost of such a context wasn’t in Runco’s budget, according to Liz Pemble, Runco’s director of marketing.

But rather than settling for a lifeless space, Runco has buddied up with other exhibitors for the last eight years to create a 20-by-30-foot, 12-seat theater inside its 40-by-40-foot booth, along with a presentation that had attendees cued up for more than an hour at CES 2006.

Eight years ago, Runco approached several exhibitors — companies that manufacture everything from wiring and audio to seating and interiors — and offered a quid-pro-quo arrangement. If exhibitors installed their products in Runco’s proposed theater, Runco would give them each a time slot to tout their wares during its theater presentation, as well as signage explaining their product contributions. Since there was little or no added expense to them, awareness-hungry exhibitors jumped at the chance for added exposure via a second presence at the show.

In 2006, partners took turns offering in-theater presentations, which mentioned each of the products used to create the theater. A red carpet drew visitors inside Runco’s Classic Movie Cinema, an enclosed, four-sided structure, where a silk, movie-theater-style curtain covered the 45.5-by-115-inch screen. Twelve visitors at a time filled the reclining chairs that vibrated and shifted to accompany the on-screen action and the high-performance surround-sound system. As the curtain pulled back, the projector sprang to life, delivering a montage of movie clips illustrating the projector’s capabilities.

The presentation also included references to partners’ booth locations, which have drifted closer to Runco’s space over the years. “When we sign up for booth space, we notify the partners where we’re going to be so they can locate themselves nearby,” Pemble says. “That way, they can easily direct attendees to their exhibits; plus, it creates a larger, unified presence among partners.”

While a few partners have come and gone, most of them are in it for the long haul — which is more than alright with Runco. “If we couldn’t partner with these exhibitors, we’d never be able to afford the theater,” Pemble says. “We simply wouldn’t do it — and that would be one giant missed opportunity.” e