Smart Design For Corporate Display Booths At Trade Shows
June 16, 2016
Smart Design Concepts For Corporate Display Booths At Trade Shows
Designing corporate display booths at trade shows goes requires vision in addition to solid marketing basics and, even more importantly, it requiring maintaining a good balance between creative vision and those basics. Your ultimate goal is still to increase sales as a result of your trade show presence, so no matter how cool and on-trend your exhibit idea is, if it doesn't incorporate elements that lead visitors, in some fashion, toward conversion, it's not an effective marketing tool.- Create Zones - One particular challenge in designing corporate trade show booths is that corporations typically represent more than one product line at a given show. The more closely related the lines are, the easier it is to come up with an effective exhibit to represent them all. One solution is to create zones within the exhibit, which not only allows each product line its own space, but also helps to manage traffic flow, and funnel visitors toward the appropriate rep for each line. Polaroid used the zone approach to its display at CES to great effect, with separate zones for various product lines, a lounge area which encouraged visitors to stay in their sphere of influence longer, and a stage area for a celebrity product roll-out event, all tied together with a massive pair of ribbon screens to broadcast their visual branding far and wide.
- Create An Experience - Another approach to blowing the competition away is to design an experience your buyers won't be able to resist. This is especially effective for tech and multimedia exhibits, as Activision Blizzard demonstrated with their enormous interactive exhibit at the GAMEfest retail conference. The exhibit was designed with more than 100 stations for visitors to sit down and experience the astounding seven new titles Activision Blizzard introduced at the event. The large number of stations kept wait times manageable, and visitors also got an exclusive theatrical preview presentation of a hotly anticipated new title. The exhibit was surrounded by giant graphics, and it quickly became the "in" place to visit at the show. And, of course, visitors took to social media in droves to talk about the experience.
- Create A Mood - Never overlook the power of a good lightscape in an effective corporate trade show exhibit. Professional lighting designers fine-tune the color and placement of lights in your display to strike a perfect balance and bring your exhibit to life. You need your exhibit's lightscape to be attention-getting, but not alarming. The wrong kind of lighting can actually send visitors away in discomfort, for example light that is too bright or too blue is also too jarring for visitors. Up-lights create dramatic effects on inanimate objects, but when up-lighting hits humans, it gives them a disturbing, ghastly appearance. Once you've got the overall exhibit concept in place, get a professional lighting designer involved as soon as possible, so you get the right lightscape to create the mood you want in your exhibit.