There's No Business Like Show Business

Tradeshows….Just the thought of them starts an ache in my back. Sometimes I find them a necessary evil and other times a crapshoot. It’s always strange to do a new show for the first time because you don’t know what to expect from a traffic perspective, especially if they switch locations every year. And in the competition for booth spiffs, stunts and attractions, someone is always raising the ante.

Interphex
We always do Interphex every year and this year was no exception. Well, the exception was that it was in Philadelphia instead of New York. Nobody ever said why, I think somebody didn’t book the Javits in time and they got bumped by the car show. At the end of Interphex, I wish I had gone to see the cars instead. It was nice to unveil the new brand and the new tradeshow graphic which actually has a giant sandbox on it.

The show had been morphing from an older manufacturing and packaging show to something trying to be more modern. Interphex normally has the main show on the first floor and the med device in the basement. This time, med device was the main floor and Interphex was one level up. Confused yet? To make it worse, the Pharma-IT section was in another zip code. They had a new section called Outsourcing but do you think they let us buy a booth there for the same price? .. Nooo. They put Pharma-IT with the Pharma-Automation section (distinguished by the ever popular different color carpeting) because of course a company that offers consulting services in IT, QA and Regulatory has everything in common with the booth next door showing off their pill counting machine. Last year (which I blogged about) we were across from people selling plastic tubs. Yes, I’m sure you can see the connection right away If so, please let me know what it is because I’m still scratching my head on that one. But Mr. Pill Counter and his noisy machine were very complimentary about our logo and tradeshow booth graphic so I can’t be mad at him, since we were both stuck out there in no man’s land.

The best booth stunt was an organ grinder with a live monkey. I'd like to know how he got beyond all the regulations to do that one! For many years we’ve had a celebrity impersonator in the booth while at the same time, Keith Parent and members of our life sciences team were giving interviews in the press room. So they get to play grownup while I get to waggle a camera at people to come take their picture with Elvis, Marilyn or Cher. This year, we decided to rent a big screen TV and play Wii sports with people. Let’s face it; I’m really just trying to get you into my booth so that we can talk about how Court Square can help you. Partly because I need to show an ROI on this show but mostly because I really think we can help.

This year, I got tennis elbow for the same privilege. One woman, claiming tennis stardom in her college years, was so aggressive with her backhand; she practically knocked over my booth. I was waiting for her to go change into a little white dress with terry cloth wrist bands and recruit a passerby to be the line judge. I would have thrown the game if it meant a hot lead for our sales team. Yes, I can swallow my pride for the sake of a project implementing document management or doing a quality audit. Just keep that between us, though. I wouldn't want to give my sales colleagues any idea.

The traffic in the Philadelphia Interphex was much slower. The food was non existent so you had to walk across the street to the very interesting Reading Terminal Market. I would love to see this place on a normal day because when the Interphex lunch traffic poured in there, it was 90 minutes to get your cheesesteak. For me, there were two good things about Interphex Philadelphia. First was the ease to walk back to your hotel instead of trying to hail a NYC cab at shift change. That takes either a miracle or a lot of money to pay the guy in the Town Car. The second was convincing a coworker to take a train ride up to NY to see Monty Python’s Spamalot for my birthday and then take the train back, all in the same night. We got back to the hotel at 1 AM. Of course if Interphex had been in NYC, I could have had sleep on my birthday to go with the laughter. That would have been verra, verra nice. (That’s a Python joke not a typo.)

I’m glad Interphex doesn’t normally move around and for 2009, I expressed my dismay to the show people about the bad location (OK, I whined) and so we have a booth in the outsourcing section next year. All you CROs and CMOs better look out, I will probably bring back another impersonator. I know where all the super secret service elevators are in the Javits too. The best thing about Philadelphia is that we did have some good interviews; look for an article on auditing in one of the major journals next month.

BIO International-San Diego
Last year the big BIO show was in Boston so I drove out there and met up with Keith Parent (who promised me a blog about all his world travels recently). This show is so different from others in that it is very international and more economic development focused. Not to mention after 4 PM, it’s like a giant frat party with each country trying to outdo the other in terms of food and various liquid refreshments.

We decided to join the Massachusetts pavilion this year in a booth. I was unable to make the trip so two of our sales team went out with Keith. Unfortunately, they ran into weather and flight delay problems and it took almost 36 hours to get out there. The mini booth made it before they did; I told them they should have just checked themselves as luggage. The show is not one where a lot of business is done in the traditional sense; it really is one where you get a great feel for what is going to happen in the industry over the next couple of years. It is also a great way to interact with other regions around the world. BIO is one of those “seen and be seen” type of events. This makes it a great show but it also makes it difficult to attract booth traffic without some real flash. I look forward to attending the next one in Atlanta. I’m still thinking about the flash. Any ideas?

DIA Annual-Boston
Last year the annual meeting of the Drug Information Association was in Atlanta and Keith chaired a session with a few customers on Good Systems Practice. I remember that he called me from the show and said it was an excellent event and that we should be at the next one. The good news is that it was in Boston, which is 90 minutes down the Mass Pike from our headquarters and even closer from our eastern Mass office. The better news is that he got invited back to chair a session again. The bad news is it was starting just 36 hours after BIO ended on the opposite coast so I had to send our mini booth to San Diego and keep the big booth for Boston.

To make matters worse, I had booked my family’s vacation over the Christmas holiday without looking at my work calendar and ended up overlapping DIA. Not that I didn’t enjoy getting a good sunburn while snorkeling off of a catamaran in Cozumel, but I really wanted to attend this event.

Since we had never exhibited at this conference, I added a few extra things for the sales guys to have in their arsenal. Some Red Sox tickets, some foldable flying Frisbees with our new logo and I sent along our Wii to play. Everyone wants toys at this show, I guess those clinical types like to play after trying to rid the world of horrible diseases during the day. Most shows never use up much collateral (data sheets and whatnot) but this one did. Although I often wonder where that collateral ends up. I'm sure after I hand you an expensive data sheet,you’ll get tired of carrying it and throw out on your way to the parking lot or when you pack up that suitcase to go home. It's Ok to admit it, I do the same thing.

We had some great conversations and it gave us the opportunity to announce our new clinical and regulatory services as well as our involvement as a member of the Clinical Research Consortium of Massachusetts. The CRCM is a group of four companies working with other countries to help them set up clinical trials centers of excellence. First up is Italy. Now I really regret not learning Italian from my maternal grandmother but she wanted to learn English instead. C'est la vie. (See, I told you I never learned Italian.)

So the bottom line and the answer to my pondering many paragraphs ago (for those of you still awake) is that some tradeshows are necessary evils and some are very worthwhile. Interphex has fallen in between those two, we’ve met some great new customers there and you can’t beat the exposure to editors. But they treat IT like an after thought. Thankfully, since we are more than an IT company, we get to play in the outsourcing sandbox next year. In pure, explain it to our Comptroller spreadsheet ROI-ese, BIO isn’t worth the booth rental but you don’t really attend BIO to make a sale. You attend BIO to get the pulse of the industry and meet extremely interesting people. DIA is a great show for education and for doing business but remember to bring toys. I usually don’t like toys at a show because people take them without even saying hello or buying you dinner and a movie, it’s like a drive-by. But at DIA, they wanted to know what we were about too. It probably helped that one of our account guys apparently was a carnival barker in a previous life.

My one request for all you show/conference managers. Please standardize! Even with a running spreadsheet, my intern had a hard time of keeping track of- this show package has carpet but this one doesn’t. These two have tables but the third doesn’t even say. Do we want a skirt on the table? Do we want a skirt on the sales guys? HEY! I think I just found the flash for BIO 2009.



The Marketing Maven

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