I’ve talked before about timid exhibitors cowering in a small booth, spending most of their time staring at a bowl of Junior Mints. To a certain extent, it’s understandable. There’s a player to your left in a 70 x 70 with a putting green. There’s a big dog to your right, with more crowd gatherers than you have employees.

And then there’s you, in your pop-up booth. Small. New-ish. Unproven … as both a trade show presence and a technology. But what if you were the baddest company on the trade show block? What if you were a super-heavyweight among heavyweights. In the immortal words of Cheers, what if everybody knew your name, and they were always glad you came?

If you were truly the most important company on the trade show floor (and everybody knew it), you would walk differently. You would talk differently. There’d be a certain swagger and authority you’d bring to every interaction. Even contemplating that notion and conjuring the mental image creates a bit of a shift. It just feels different. And if carried through to the exhibit hall, it’ll look different to everyone around you.

It’s really no different than what you’d tell a socially awkward junior high student about that dreaded walk through the cafeteria: Just act like you belong, and soon enough, you will. In fact, act like a rock star, and soon you’ll have groupies of your own.

We spend so much time worrying about all the nitty-gritty elements that go into a trade-show presence—building the booth, selecting the signage and messaging, showcasing the product—that it’s easy to overlook the importance of attitude. The truth is, a good head game is often more important than a strong trade show ground game.

So, at your next trade show, when those attendees come tearing through the aisles, act like they’re there to see YOU.  Act like you OWN the joint. Don’t worry, those Junior Mints aren’t going anywhere.

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

So what is it about this window into the world of 1960s ad executives that has put us into a collective withdrawal since the season finale? It’s easy to say the writing is superb and the performances are first-rate. But more specifically, the messages embedded in the advertising storylines are endlessly captivating.

Today I’d like to talk about the ad campaigns themselves. Don Draper and his cohorts understand that in any kind of writing — especially advertising — everything has to be “big.” They understand that, in writing, you don’t give the central character a chest cold; you give him a terminal illness. What makes the plight compelling is how high the physical or emotional stakes are. So, Don or Peggy figures out what’s life-changing about a swimsuit or briefcase or floor wax and ups the ante.

There’s real brilliance in elevating a tray in a slide projector to the level of poetry by calling it “The Carousel.”

The Draper campaigns illustrate that when marketing any product, the statements have to be bold and the benefits colossal. From a trade show perspective, it’s our responsibility to figure out what those “big” benefits are. Challenge yourself to figure out what’s life-altering about your product so that it truly stands out. You can’t afford to piddle around emphasizing the “small stuff” because if you take your product for granted, the audience will, too. Your message needs to be honest and believable, but it needs to be memorable!

That’s how I view my job as a trade show presenter: What can I say that will transcend this product or service? What’s the hook? What’s the differentiator? What can take this technology from being an inanimate object and make people feel its impact on their lives?

I’m not talking about making your trade show audience cry (necessarily), but why do we have to think of your enterprise server or security solution or other product you’ve designed, built, and devoted so much time to, as just the next temporary thing? Why can’t it be something “bigger” … something with a higher purpose?

That’s the artistry in advertising and marketing: making a human connection in everything you do.

I remember as a child sitting at the dining room table as my dad loaded up “The Carousel” to show us the latest round of family pictures. We kids fought against it then but are so grateful for those memories now … especially since Dad’s gone. It was only possible (and that device was only in our home) because someone looked at that object and asked, “How do I turn this into something beautiful?”

It’s not just stuff that you make; it’s stuff that can change people’s lives, change their perceptions and change what they do and need. Don’t tell me about the speed of your processor or the capacity of your drive. Tell me what this will do for the guy in the third row whose work life is really difficult, and his home life is suffering as a result. That’s what “mad men” do: They ask, “What is it that will get someone to look at this in a totally different way?”

So, I ask you: What’s life-changing about your product? Don’t rest until you have the answer.

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

Nine times out of 10, this mystical “connection” comes down to presenting to your audience instead of presenting at your audience. I’m talking about basic presentation techniques — ones that sound painfully obvious until you watch an actual live presentation and see things going horribly wrong. Today, I’d like to talk about one of the biggest offenses: ear prompter abuse, which is a problem so prevalent it should actually be criminal, as in, haul that guy off the stage and put him in solitary so he can’t hurt anyone …

If you’re using a prompter and you’re just repeating lines being fed into your ear, then here’s what you have to do to be successful:

1. Avoid eye contact with attendees at all cost, because it might distract you from the voice in your head.

2. Don’t stray from the script because you might miss something you’re told or get off track.

3. And don’t move or act in any way that might distract you from the instructions of your puppet master.

And 4. If you want your audience to remain conscious, ignore the first three instructions.

When it comes to trade shows, “live presentation” is synonymous with “live performance.” It’s more important that you’re captivating your audience than it is to say anything in particular. Engage in eye contact at all times. React to bad (or good) body language with constant course corrections. Change your cadence, timbre and points of emphasis based on the energy of the crowd.

Believe me, blank stares are a lot worse than going a little bit “off script.”

As in most areas of life, change can be very good — even if it comes in the middle of a live trade show presentation. As an actor back in the early days of my career, I did a lot of live theater, including one show that ran for almost two years.  I had to go into each performance reminding myself: “You’re not reciting these lines; you’re creating them.” I had to perform the words every night as if it were the first time they were leaving my lips — as if the situation I was in was brand new.  Each performance had to feel fresh and unique and alive …

The trade show environment is no different. An audience wants authenticity and engagement.  They want to feel that you actually give a damn about what you’re talking about and that you’re passionate.

If all you’re doing is delivering a staged recitation of a marketing white paper … then your audience might as well be reading it online (where no one will see them sleeping).

One final tip:

If you want to use an ear prompter the right way, be sure to buy the best equipment available and get training from an expert. In my mind, the best ear prompter guy in the business is Brian Collins at Ovation.

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

No problem!  At Magnet Productions, we do a lot of “straight” presentations.  But what we NEVER do is boring presentations. A presenter (even if he’s not doing a game show, magic or escaping from a straitjacket) can STILL command an audience’s attention and keep them entertained with little more than a microphone and a great story.

The key is to simplify the message and tell that story in a way that will engage your audience.

One great technique for this is creating a dialogue. When developing your script, ask yourself what questions an attendee might have.  What are their “pain points?” Incorporate these questions into your spiel. You can pose them to yourself on behalf of your audience, but here’s a more effective approach: Put the questions on index cards and hand them out to several audience members before the show. Cue them to ask the questions at the appropriate time (perhaps rewarding them with a trade show giveaway). Make the questions interesting, or dare I suggest, funny. The substance of the question is real. And, of course, the answer is real. But now, instead of droning on to a zoned out audience, your people are engaged, curious and entertained.

Regardless of your approach, the key is to break up those big blocks of trade show talk. Twelve minutes of non-stop tech is going to bomb. Divide it into four “chapters” with questions or equally thoughtful interludes. Nothing over the top; no balloon animals. Just moments during which you can check the pulse of your audience. And resuscitate them if necessary.

In terms of visuals, remember that PowerPoint is death. Try a dry erase board instead, like that guy in the UPS commercials. His presentation of the information is utterly simple, but it’s still interesting. So, be a little unpredictable — even with a “straight” presentation. It will go a long way to holding your audience and having a successful show.

Have an industry-related question? Send “Newman” an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

We all know that digitized scalable monitoring can offer a compatible WYSIWYG Intranet or a horizontal, even-keeled knowledge base. But for an extended fault tolerant matrix or for ameliorated scalable process improvement, you really need extended systematic software. In fact, a vision-oriented actuating migration or a right-sized, bottom-line help desk can provide the kind of eco-centric customer loyalty for which we all clamor.

Something tells me that opening paragraph didn’t do much for you. In fact, if you were a trade show attendee listening to THAT presentation, I suspect you’d fake an “important phone call” just so you could get up and leave. Yet, many trade show presentations sound just like this.  Many of them (most?) are little more than a staged reading of a marketing whitepaper — without any emotional connection at all.

Specs and high-tech talking points don’t sell products and services; enthusiasm and passion do.

Connecting with your audience is key. They need to hear the passion and energy in your voice, and they need to hear how that product will change their lives (or the world at large). How is this going to help people? Why should they care? What are the benefits for them? And why are you so excited about it? For some reason, answering those essential questions is most often lost in the development of the presentation script.

Whether it’s an enterprise-class server or a new baby formula, you MUST find a way to be passionate when you’re talking about it.

I recently represented a solar power company at a large home and garden show. The company had given me the basic data points about solar panels, which I incorporated into my presentation. After just a few shows, it became very clear to me that attendees weren’t paying much attention to those details. What they responded to was the way I talked about solar power. They could tell that I really believed in this technology — that it was good for the homeowner and good for the planet — and they flocked to me after the presentations with their technical questions.

They just figured if I was that passionate about the product, I must know all the nitty-gritty details. So, clearly what stayed with them wasn’t the technical info. It was the way they connected with me and my presentation OF that information.

I was getting qualified leads and signing people up for free in-home consultations based on the feeling the people had about the product and how it could help them … and the feeling they had about the “energy” of the presentation.

That energy — that passion — needs to be there all the time. If you’re the presenter, you have to find something about that product or service that you can really get behind. As a presenter, you owe it to yourself and to your audience to be genuinely passionate about your subject. The audience will pick up on that … or they’ll just be lulled into a coma by a barrage of corporate jargon.

If you’re not hiring a professional trade show presenter, then find someone in the company who is genuinely passionate and has the facility to deliver that passion on stage. Eight minutes is long enough, so long as that enthusiasm comes through. More than the size of the booth, more than the thickness of your carpet pad, this passion level really matters. The alternative isn’t pretty:

“We offer you a 24-7, mission critical, best-of-class, paradigm-shifting solution that will proactively enable cross-platform deliverables in a synergistic, distributed LAN/WAN environment.”

Twitter streams are overflowing with loud, unsolicited advertisements for all sorts of random stuff. And while I won’t begrudge someone for attempting to raise awareness about their e-book, that approach really misses the point.

What business people and trade show exhibitors don’t typically realize with Twitter is the potential for connection. Sure, it’s not the same as engaging someone face-to-face, but when are you going to be face-to-face with Demi Moore (@mrskutcher) or the CEO of Zappos (@Zappos) or the Chief Technology Officer at Cisco (@Padmasree). Even with a “connection” to Cisco, Padmasree Warrior wouldn’t take my call or respond to my e-mail. But Demi and Tony and Padmasree are actively involved in the Twitter community and responding to tweets—especially if they’re clever or funny or helpful.

This is the equivalent of getting invited to “that party” and having a chance to start a dialogue and charm influential people with your personality. More to that point, you wouldn’t walk into that VIP party and immediately say, “Here’s what I’m selling!”  They’d shun you instantly (if you didn’t get kicked out altogether). But through a genuine conversation, talk might turn to what you do, and that person or the company that person represents might very well recognize a need for your services.

Twitter “conversations” are just as relaxed. It’s fun and often silly, but you can get work done within this budding medium. It’s just important to remember that Twitter is inherently a social model, not a business one. The business comes later … just like in real life.

This holds true for the flipside of the equation, too. Recently, Zappos posted the following tweet:

http://twitpic.com/f4pqp – Coolest. Toilet Seat Cover. Ever. (Never thought I’d use those words together)”

The other day there was a message about cool outfits Zappos employees made out of duct tape. (http://bit.ly/4P3h) And while Tony Hsieh just seems like a genuinely cool guy to hang out with, what’s subtly happening is he’s building brand loyalty. After months of connecting with Tony, how much more likely will you be to log on for that next pair of shoes or stop by if you were to see a Zappos booth at a trade show?

That’s because if you were at a trade show and you knew that a close friend of yours had a booth, you would stop by. You wouldn’t just go to the trade show and blow off a friend. A regular common experience with another Twitter feed will foster that sense of fellowship—even if it’s a big corporation. That’s powerful stuff. Certainly much more powerful than 140 characters overtly trying to sell me something.

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

Well, Ray … simply put, don’t use PowerPoint. I’ve seen more PowerPoint used badly at trade shows than anywhere else. Even a tight, concise presentation can be sabotaged by poor PowerPoint usage. It’s just not enough to throw up bullet points, text, graphics and beauty shots of the product. That’s exactly what it is: throwup. The audience’s eyes glaze right over—especially if you’re reading from the PowerPoint as if it were a TelePrompTer.

The only time to use PowerPoint is when there is something you have to show that words cannot adequately describe. Use it for counterpoint, irony, humor and surprise. I started off a recent live presentation with a 60-slide PowerPoint presentation. Sixty real, honest-to-goodness slides about the company. But it was a joke.  I put those 60-slides on automatic at overdrive PowerPoint speed. The whole thing ran about eight seconds from start to finish, with frenzied music underneath. At the halfway point it stopped and said, “YOU’RE GETTING THIS, RIGHT?”  Then it did 30 more slides with an epic music finale and one final slide that said, “ANY QUESTIONS?”

Can you imagine the applause? Can you imagine the additional applause when I told the audience we weren’t going to do anything like that? Ultimately, I did use PowerPoint during the presentation, but only for exquisite images from nature that enhanced the storytelling.

I tell my clients all the time that if you hired a compelling presenter, you want the people looking at that presenter. You want me to make contact with your audience-to look them in the eyes and tell them that company’s story. You don’t want their eyes shifting back and forth between me and the screen because that will dilute the message completely.

PowerPoint is not effective; storytelling is effective. If you use juggling, magic, plate-spinning or humor to tell that story, it’ll trump PowerPoint every time.

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

There’s been some recent doom and gloom about the future of the trade show industry. To Jeff and everyone else with similar concerns, I have a simple message: The trade show is far from dead. People are just spending more selectively.

Face-to-face marketing is not going away. Ever. We have the Internet, but the telephone isn’t going away. For that matter, we have the telephone, but we’re still getting together to talk in person.

Look at the Presidential Inauguration. Was there any particular reason why people had to stand outside in 20-degree temperatures (10-below with the wind chill) for hours and hours to see Mr. Obama be sworn in? The crowds were so deep that many were freezing and three-quarters of a mile away from the stage watching details a JumboTron.

Why didn’t all 2 million of those people just stay and watch in the comfort of their living rooms?

Because we have to be with each other. That is fundamentally who we are, and that’s not going to change. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated our technology gets. We now have “telepresence” where you can be talking to someone halfway around the world, and it’s so real you could seemingly reach out and touch one another.

But it’s not real.

It’s close enough to save a lot of money and reduce a carbon footprint. Companies should absolutely utilize technology to avoid spending money on travel just to have a two-hour meeting only to get on a plane and fly all the way back. There is a host of compelling reasons for that. But people are still going to congregate on the National Mall in D.C., when there’s a defining moment in history.

Social Beings Thrive on Connection

We are social creatures, and we absolutely thrive on connection. So, to think for a minute that the trade show is going to go away … because it’s being supplanted by what? By blogs?

Virtual parties are not replacing dinner parties. We still want the contact.

Yes, industry studies show some real, tangible trade show shrinkage. But that’s more about people wising up and removing redundancy from the system.

The Numbers Are Real, But So Are the People

At CES, there was a reported 25 percent attrition rate this year, which doesn’t surprise me given the economy. But it was still a huge show with people still waiting in cab lines for an hour to get back to their hotels. My clients may have gone from 10 trade shows a year to four trade shows a year. But they were simply being more selective. They picked the four trade shows that made the most sense for them. But that reduction made intelligent marketing all the more important.

Yes, the big, bloated trade shows are disappearing. But we are fundamentally social beings and we like to transact business that way. It’s just about being more intelligent about how we do it. You’re not going to go to every single trade show that has even remotely anything to do with your business and invest in a 50×50 booth with as big a booth staff as possible. That’s going to break you.

It becomes about making cuts with a scalpel instead of a hatchet: Pick the right trade shows. Populate the booth with the right people. Do the right kind of pre-show marketing and the right kind of presentation to guarantee that ROI will be huge. Just be smart about your investment because trade shows are not going anywhere. We’re never going to stop wanting to meet each other.

My philosophy on this matter and my business are inextricably linked. I don’t believe for a minute that this industry is over. If I did, I’d be jumping ship and finding something else. There are plenty of other things that I could do.

We’re always going to want to connect—no matter how sophisticated we get. I really believe that. I’ve been in the trade show business for 25 years. I’ve seen it go through this incredible cycle—the ebb and flow—but when it comes down to it, people want to see one another.

A colleague reminded me recently that there are very few opportunities to get so many potential customers in one place at one time the way you do at a trade show. That person said: “I don’t care what people say about trade shows being less popular than they were. There is still no better way to do this. The right people are at the trade show. You’re not going to get that kind of situation anywhere else.

“What you have to do then is make sure there’s a compelling reason for them to come and visit you. It’s about something going on in the booth. Sure, it’s about having a good story and a good product, but it’s also about getting people to want to visit.”

I couldn’t have said it any better myself.

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.