The Jazz Singer

Hosting the jazz legend Cab Calloway in your booth sounds like a music lover’s dream. But my dream turned into a silent nightmare when a booth snafu not only angered the iconic hip cat; he got so mad he put his scat on mute.

Several years back when I worked for a large New York book publisher, my boss asked me to man our 10-by-10-foot booth during a book show at the Heinz Auditorium in Boston. I planned to drive into the city from my suburban Boston home to set up our product displays and talk up our latest book releases, while our main office in New York would ship me a booth, signage, and boxes of our books.

But when I arrived at my booth space the day of the show, I found nothing but a long folding table, a generic black-and-white sign with my company’s name, and a couple of chairs from show management. None of the promised materials from New York had materialized.

Knowing how things can get lost at a trade show, I immediately checked the loading docks but came up empty. Then I called the home office in the Big Apple, only to discover that while my exhibit and a big box of our books had been packed for the show, no one bothered to ship them to Boston.

So there I sat in a Spartan booth with no books, no signage, and no exhibit, and with less than two hours to go before the show opened. After a temporary moment of panic, I realized I needed to find a solution, or my company’s presence at this show would look less like a literary masterpiece and more like a blank page.

I decided my best solution was to fill the booth with as many books as I could find. Knowing I had loads of books back at my house, I rushed home, grabbed as many books as possible, and dashed back to our space. I quickly set up a no-frills tabletop display featuring about 100 different titles, finishing up just in time for the show’s opening bell.

Not long into the show, a book reviewer for the Boston Globe approached me. She asked if I had a copy of our recent Cab Calloway biography, as she was planning to write a review of the book in the newspaper. Luckily, I had a single copy of the biography, “Of Minnie the Moocher & Me,” and as I handed it over, I mentally patted myself on the back for my proper, albeit random, book selection.

But my satisfaction was short lived. About an hour after my lone copy of the biography walked out of my booth, in walked the Hi-De-Ho Man himself, Cab Calloway. A huge fan of Calloway, I was thrilled to have the jazz legend in my company’s exhibit. But thrill turned to chill, as before I could utter more than a “Hello,” Calloway asked me, “Where’s my book?”

After a bit of mental jitterbugging, it finally occurred to me that among the other things my boss forgot to tell me was that my company had hired the jazz legend to sign autographs in the booth. Red-faced and panicked, I tried to explain, “Well, that’s a funny story ... ” But Calloway wasn’t laughing. In fact, realizing that I had no copies of his book in the exhibit — and having been paid to spend an hour in the booth — Calloway didn’t say another word. He simply grabbed the spare chair, sat in the farthest corner of the booth, crossed his arms, and glared at me for his entire 60-minute gig. When his hour was up, Calloway simply stood up and left without uttering another word.

After the book fair, I told my boss how despite angering Calloway, I’d still come up with a cool solution and I’d even helped swing us a book review in the Boston Globe. But he was more steamed about angering the jazz singer than he was happy about the review coup. I guess some people just don’t appreciate jazz improv.

— Paul Dowd, vice president sales and marketing, Wytech Industries Inc., Rahway, NJ



Arrested Development

Getting picked up by the police is never a good way to start a trade show. But when the detained party — in this case our booth literature and giveaways — can’t even make its one phone call, it takes a little detective work to save the day.

While working as the marketing manager for Equifirst Corp., my marketing coordinator sent a booth with a box of giveaways and literature to our on-site booth manager, Brian, at the 2007 Arizona Association of Mortgage Brokers show in Phoenix. The morning the show was due to open, Brian called to tell me that he found our 10-by-20-foot exhibit, but the box of literature and giveaways was missing.

A quick call to FedEx revealed that the wayward box had not only arrived in Phoenix, but had been received by a staff member at the hotel where the show was being held. Digging deeper into this mystery, Brian tracked down the hotel staffer who’d signed for the box, and the two of them went looking for our AWOL collateral — unfortunately, to no avail.

With the show starting in just a few hours, the case of our missing FedEx box had us both baffled.

Since the missing product literature had me worried the most, I told Brian I’d e-mail him some PDFs of the documents so he could get them reproduced at a local Kinkos. While this was not a perfect solution, it would tide us over until the missing box was found.

As I was sending the files to Brian, I received a phone call from my local printer who had created the original product literature. It seems that the Phoenix police department had phoned him, since his company’s name also appeared on our missing box’s exterior, to let him know that they had our shipment. Apparently, a police task force charged with investigating shipped contraband thought our innocent little package looked suspicious — so worrisome, in fact, that the box had been nabbed by the fuzz and taken in for questioning.

While I’d located the box, which police assured me was no longer in lockup, the cops wouldn’t return it to the hotel. Thus, I told Brian to make about 50 copies of the product literature so he’d have enough until everything was in his possession. Once he delivered the copies to the booth, Brian raced across Phoenix to free our giveaways and fliers. Thankfully, he made it back to the booth just 30 minutes after the show started, and our arrested materials were finally free to be distributed to attendees.

While the cops never did say why our standard FedEx shipping box had been so suspicious, justice — and our tchotchkes — had finally been served.

— Kristen Bostedo-Conway, marketing director, Sona MedSpa International Inc., Charlotte, NC