This post is for:

• Anyone who has every attended a trade show for any business so you’ll know why they may be changing drastically or going away entirely (so your sales, networking and educational opportunities may start to evaporate)
• Anyone who has ever exhibited at a trade show so you’ll know your dissatisfaction was and is not singular (so your marketing and sales plan will change and the thumpings you’ve received from your CFO on expenses may have to finally be heeded)
• Anyone who is in the trade show industry so you’ll know why you may be losing your job and who is responsible (in many cases, you may be part of the problem and if its not you, you know who it is)

THE GOOD AND BAD
Trade shows (like the recent VOICES, or SXSW or CES – The Consumer Electronics Show and hundreds more) are extremely valuable to exhibitors and attendees alike for networking, education, new product roll out, sales, client retention and hospitality among a myriad of positives.

Trade shows are also now more than ever ridiculously expensive to produce, travel to and exhibit in because of costs like hotels, food and beverage, exhibit hall and union fees as just a few of the myriad of prohibitive negatives.

I have personally produced, from the exhibitor side of things, many tradeshows from small 100 person gatherings to exhibits in the top 10 biggest trade shows in the country. The negatives are starting to significantly outweigh the positives for exhibitors and this valuable and worthwhile marketing channel is in trouble.

And this pending change, this economically mandated evolution if you will, will impact your business no matter what it is and no matter whether you are an exhibitor, an attendee or a show producer.

THE FACTS FROM SOMEONE WHO KNOWS
Direct your attention, if you will to a blog post by Tim Bourquin, who owns TNC New Media, a company that produces multiple trade shows each year.

The post offers a fairly naked behind the scenes view of the problems with the trade show industry. You should read the whole thing. He’s saying exhibitors and attendees can spend their marketing dollars elsewhere and will. That is a smack on the back of the head of the trade show industry from one of its benefactors.

WHETHER AT THE RAMADA OR THE PEPSI CENTER = MONEY
Convention Centers are going to be in trouble if they don’t change their ways, trade unions and non-union workers in these facilities are going to be out of job if they don’t significantly adjust their attitudes and convention dependent hotels and vendors are going lose more money than they could ever have possibly imagined.

Trade shows as we know them WILL change. The internet has given people the knowledge that bigger is not always better. That centralization (having one big industry convention) is effective only to a point and that “point” will be determined by cost. That threshold, Bourquin’s blog post and my experience tells me, is now cracking.

Is it the end of the world? No.

But the evolution, in my opinion, will be drastic. So what’s it to you? If you don’t think the trade show industry touches your personal business, industry and global economies like a largely mutated octopus, you are not paying attention.

Tags: advertising, blogs, commentary, internet, marketing // Comments Off on poor business practices – a view from the top

You didn’t ask but I’ll tell you anyway. I came home and nobody was around so I decided I’d have a little chocolate milk. So over to the fridge for the milk and some (well the way I make it, a lot of) Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup.

And then I start singing the Hershey’s jingle that I have not heard in a billion years but up it popped out of my one good brain cell. No I didn’t recording this particular jingle session. I wouldn’t do that to you.

However, being the age of the internet I decide I should go look for the spot and darned if I didn’t find it. So as far as you know, this is what I sounded like when I was singing the Hershey’s jingle.

But then there was something on You Tube about Carrie Underwood and Hershey. Turns out she has an advertising agreement with them and did spots promoting a bunch of their candy brands and a t-shirt giveaway.

I won’t editorialize on how brilliant it was to tie in a young but widely respected American country singer to revive old jingles and who looks Great (note the capital G) in t-shirts but I’ll let you judge for yourself as I have to go out and buy some chocolate bars.

Tags: advertising, commercials, internet, marketing, peter o'connell, silliness, tv // Comments Off on this is how my mind works sometimes

Only occasionally on this blog do I impose my musical tastes on you and it really has been a while. The primary reason is because most of the music I hear is ultimately unremarkable. The secondary reason is because I just don’t listen to a ton radio.

But I have found three songs that I really like this summer. Two of them are totally uncool for a guy like to me be liking so I’ll keep them to myself. The air check demo was embarrassment enough for one week.

This is from Coldplay and it’s the kind of song that would make me listen again and again on my record player if…I…still…had one.

Tags: commentary, radio, silliness // 2 Comments »

Tom Asacker has a sharp eye for branding and he brilliantly points out in this post how dangerous the competitive paradigm for business can be.

Endlessly comparing your brand, your operation, your mode of doing business to your competitors leads you ultimately to focus on the wrong things.

The concept is an easy one and not original (certainly not new to this blog) but its one that I think continually gets overlooked by businesses every day. What about you? Be honest. You don’t have to tell anyone but please be honest with yourself.

Be aware, yes, but don’t even be in the neighborhood of obsessed.

Tags: advertising, commentary, marketing // Comments Off on the inefficiencies of competing brands

Want to know the name of the female voice over talent whose voice has been used to attack Obama in McCain commercials?

Her name is Joan. The rest is on a need to know basis.

Tags: advertising, announcers, commentary, commercials, radio, voice actors, voice casting, voice talent, voiceover // 2 Comments »

If you had asked me three years ago who the h-e-double hockey sticks Dora the Explorer was I might have guess a nickname for a medical device that was part of an unpleasant medical experience – the older I get the more I start to think that way.

But most everyone with kids knows its an ungodly popular TV animated show and billion dollar enterprise for Nick Jr. I have about a dozen Dora related products in my home (more to come I’m sure) including pull up diapers because as the Muppets will tell you you’re not really a hit in TV animation until your animated likeness is plastered all over a…diaper. Please insert your own joke here.

But for fans of the show and for voice over, this upcoming season will unveil a new voice talent for Dora. Caitlin Sanchez, a 12 year old from New Jersey and new to VO, is set to fill the role of Dora. While I offer my congratulations to her as I’m sure she’ll do a fine job, I wonder if the current audience will notice the change as the producers hope they won’t.

For example, even as a child I noticed voice acting changes on the Flintstones during the series and its various incarnations and the later voices made me tune out. Now maybe I was a VO producer even as a child but I think kids are more discerning that adults give them credit for or even hope they’ll be.

I’ll be interested to observe if a certain young lady around our house notices any difference in her must-see-TV.

Thanks for reading.

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Tags: animation, character voices, commentary, marketing, voice actors, voice casting, voice talent, voiceover // 10 Comments »