Sustainable exhibition marketing

In the past, exhibitions were notorious for being a shamefully wasteful marketing exercise. You’d stand aghast at the end of a show as everything from packaging & flooring right through to entire exhibition stands hit the general refuse skip!

Of course times have changed and thankfully there’s much greater awareness. Venues provide skips for recycling materials, carpet can be recycled or stored and re-used, whilst PDF brochures and smart phone technology are eliminating the need for mass printing.

One of the most significant changes in recent years is the prevailing demand for reusable exhibition stands - even for large scale custom-build designs. But let’s be honest, whilst many exhibitors are committed to sustainability, their motivation isn’t only environmental responsibility, it’s cost efficiency.

And yet flying in the face of all this change for the better remains a great deal of wasted opportunity. At every trade show you’ll find stands that simply don’t deliver.

Dan, founder of Designrock, specialists in the design & build of modular exhibition displays offers exhibitors the following advice: “Exhibition stand design generally fails to deliver when it lacks focus. A cluttered booth in an already busy environment isn’t in any way inviting. Kept simple, however, it will hook visitors. In a glance they’ll ‘get it’ - a brand is instantly communicated.”

He adds that “Designed well a stand won’t just endure any number of events over a period of 3 maybe 5 years, it will also look fresh and current at every outing. Simple and timeless.

In today’s digital world, audio visual and lighting are crucial, but this doesn’t mean high spend, it means clever design.”

Exhibitions and face-to-face communications remain an important part of the marketing mix, but done badly they are still shamefully wasteful.