Make Your Trade Show Booth Successful & Sustainable
In Part I of a new “green” series, Newman interviews Interpretive Exhibits’ Tim Patterson, a social media whiz and expert in sustainable booth building.
In the vast majority of the posts on this blog, you pose a question and I do my best to give a coherent answer. This week, I’ve decided to switch it up by asking the questions of friend and colleague Tim Patterson — better known by many as the Trade Show Guy. Tim is Interpretive Exhibits’ VP of Sales and Marketing, which means he knows how to build a better booth.
Newman: How do you bring sustainability into your trade show presence while still being successful?
Patterson: When people come to us and want sustainability, we can offer them anything and everything that’s out there. The main question that really gets answered before anyone moves ahead is: “What does it cost?” We did a booth for a company in Eugene that was very green-conscious, and they wanted to use wheat board and a whole host of other sustainable materials. But for them, the cost was more than their budget could handle. So, we went back to other good, largely sustainable materials. It was just not quite what they originally envisioned. A lot of the times, the choice comes down to cost vs. budget — as well as new booth vs. refurbished.
Newman: I have also heard you talk in the past about utilizing found objects and materials. Could you go into that more?
Patterson: A year and a half ago I was at Outdoor Retailer Summer Market. It’s an amazing show packed with outdoor retailers of all kinds. Because of the relatively low cost of booths at this particular show, you see very large and highly creative booth design. These booths incorporated the outdoors and outdoor lifestyle in a very effective way. Some booths used tree limbs, bike frames, and all sorts of fascinating stuff to create a visually interesting backdrop. And, of course, it was all recycled.
Keen Shoes had an amazing booth that was almost entirely made out of recycled materials. I got a tour of their corporate headquarters a couple of months ago and virtually everything in there is repurposed and reused. Even their gathering place for lunches and client meetings utilizes a row of bleachers that was saved from an old high school that was being torn down. They had old car seats on pallets with wheels on them, and they’d take these contraptions to trade shows and use them. So, they didn’t have to spend money on a brand-new booth and they successfully repurposed things that would otherwise be thrown away. They’re very environmentally conscious, and their headquarters speaks to that attitude of reduce, reuse, and recycle.
One of the biggest things a company can do is have that attitude: What can we do, starting from scratch? How can we utilize what’s out there to not have to spend money on a new booth? But it’s not only attitude; it takes a company that’s willing to shift from ideas to action—and spend some money. You have to look around and find things. You have to pay people to design and cut and build. But if your materials are reused or rescued, not only does it save money; it presents a great image to your audience. And the people at Keen obviously know their audience really, really well.
Newman: If you have a company — perhaps in the tech field — that is going to be totally new to this attitude and this green trade show approach, what would you say to them about going down this road?
Patterson: What it really boils down to is the image of the company. If you have a really high-tech company, does it fit for you to have a booth that’s made of a lot of repurposed wood from an old barn, for instance? Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on what your company is promoting. If you have software that fits in that market — if there’s a relationship between the technology and sustainability — then that might be appropriate.
It can be done, but it really has to be driven by what management wants, and then that has to filter down the management chain and compose a viable approach. Once those decisions have been made on how to approach the objectives, then you start talking to trade show companies that can execute that vision in a realistic manner: Do those designs, help source the materials. Obviously, it’s a collaborative effort. The client may bring materials or even have a designer on hand, but they might not have the skill to actually build something in their trade show space.
Newman: My natural next question is: If you have a company that’s tech-based that has determined that what might work for Keen isn’t going to work for them, what else can be done on the sustainability front? But let’s hold off and pick this back up in Part II.
In Parts II and III, we’ll discuss green trade show booth materials, sustainable packaging and graphic production and green face-to-face meetings (a fascinating topic that deserves more attention). You can learn much more from Tim Patterson in his two new e-books: “Twittering Your Way to Tradeshow Success” and “101 Rules of Tradeshow Marketing,” which are both available at http://tradeshowguyblog.com.
Tags: Booth design, going green, recycling, sustainability, trade show trends
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