I stand corrected. My copy of Trade Show Executive arrived today and in it was their annual “Gold 100″ of top trade shows.

NACS is number 52. I had my stats wrong. Read More...

I’m traveling on Wednesday to a show that is significant in American marketing and the trade show world: the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS). I’ve never been to this show, so this should be a treat and an experience.

The exhibition is held in conjunction with the NACS conference and educational sessions. The conference is aimed at the owners of and suppliers to convenience stores and deals with their issues which include everything from food marketing to cigarette theft to beer and lottery sales. This organization has been around since 1961 and is really a big part of the petroleum industry. It is nothing to sneeze at or take lightly: with almost 150,000 C-stores in the U.S. doing $570 billion in business ($400 million of it in petroleum sales), they are a significant part of our retail economy. Read More...

I made my regular visit to Mr. B, the man who shines my shoes, and came away with yet another life lesson.

No, I’m not going to talk about hiring one of those shoe-shine girls for your trade show booth to build traffic. We’re going to talk about customer contact and service. Read More...

Consider that the well-planned and executed trade show does these two things:

1. Enhances all of your other marketing efforts
2. Brings your brand to life Read More...

From the AAF speech:

There are three things you want to have as the underpinnings of your show program or approach: Read More...

How do I use premiums to my best advantage at a show? Should I have more than one kind?

This was a question posed to me at the AAF-Abilene regional seminar yesterday. The questioner was concerned that have a bowl of giveaways was just playing to the general “lookie-loos” at a show and a waste of money. While she admited that they needed to have those items for the show crowd, was there a better way and how could it benefit their efforts to be at the show. Read More...

I recently purchased a home and I found that I’ll need my trade show planning skills to help me execute this move.

It seems there are a lot of similarities between show planning and move planning: Read More...