Trade Show Sponge

What’s happening with trade shows? Well, at least the trade shows I go to. There are tons of trade shows I’ve never heard of. In fact, I never fail to be amazed at the number of trade shows that exist. My favorite is the Consumer Electronics Association trade show for exhibiting at the Consumer Electronics Show. A Trade Show trade show. Funny.

I’ve always thought there were two routes to go with exhibiting at trade shows. Go to the big ones, like CES, the Housewares show or the Hardware Show. Or go to the smaller ones like all of the Gift shows, Retail Vision, or furniture shows. If you go to the big ones, you get as big of a space you can afford, and you do it once or twice a year. Hopefully, all of the customers stop by your booth. If you go the small show route, you do 30 little shows all over the country with a smaller, but strong and consistent message. It’s exhausting, but it’s regional.

It turns out there is a third way, and I see it becoming more of a trend. And here’s where I go into a little side bar.

Attending trade shows, especially the big ones, is not cheap. First of all, there is the cost of the floor space, which runs from between $10-$50 per square foot. This is just to buy your space on the trade show floor. Then there’s the booth structure itself, shipping, travel, lodging, time out of the office, someone to plan the whole thing. And there’s drayage. This is the cost you incur for the union labor guys to bring your booth structure crates from the shipping dock to your space, to store your empty crates and to take your crates back to the shipping dock after the show. This is a big cost, typically more than the cost of shipping your booth across the country. Trade shows are big business, and there are a lot of high costs associated with participating in the official events.

Here’s where I get to the up-and-coming third way to participate in trade shows. I’ll call it the “Sponge”. You sponge off of the trade show. You take advantage of the trade shows efforts to get your customers, vendor and competitors all in one town at the same time in the same building. You, on the other hand, book a hotel suite (sweet) and set-up your own traveling showroom. Your customers are already going to be there. You have their telephone number. Give them a call. Buy them dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, or drinks. Take advantage of their off-show hours.

There are lots of advantages to this:
* No extra trade show costs associated with the show organizers, unions and over-priced concessions
* No costs to build a booth, you need only bring product, displays and sales material
* Fewer employees are needed at the event
* You get the undivided attention of your customers during meetings
* $50 a square foot can get a pretty frickin’ nice hotel suite (sweet)

But there are down sides:
* You are only going to get meetings with people you already know
* The accidental discovery that you see on the trade show floor won’t happen
* There is an energy to the trade show that might not carry over to your mini-show
* When you don’t exhibit at a big trade show, you lose your priority points, which could come back and bite you if you decide to go back to the show

But, if you’re thinking of going to a new show, the Sponge option might be a good way to do it. As long as you can get into contact with the right potential customers (that’s what regional sales reps or for) and you pick a hotel and transportation close to entertainment and the convention center. You don’t want to be shuttling customers an hour out the city, or get them stuck in traffic during rush hour.

But whichever route you choose: Make Sure the Whole Thing Represents Your Brand!

The Future is Now

So, news this week has brought us two reports of convenience trouncing quality. Following the MP3 over SACD consumer choice, we’ve got movie downloads being introduced at the same time that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray technologies are struggling to stay in the news/consumer’s mind. As I have said, never mind the Coke vs. Pepsi style blue ray technology battle trying to form in the media. Blue ray technology is too expensive, and it will remain that way for a couple more years. It will take off when it breaks $100 and is seamlessly coupled with current DVD technology. But even then, Blue Ray recorders will be used to save downloaded movies from places like CinemaNow and MovieLink, not to rebuild movie archives in prerecorded HD-DVDs.

Convenience is going to win, as it usually does. How do I know? I’m lazy, too.

But what of iTunes, I might ask. What with the current Video iPod and the forthcoming, “true” video iPod expected now in the first quarter 2007. Will iTunes do for movie downloads what it dod for music and music video downloads? It is going to let us rent movies over iTunes. But, I’m beginning to have my doubts.

Here’s why: the primary use of movie downloads will not be viewing on a 2-inch, 3.5-inch or 5-inch screen. Listening to music is generally something people do alone. Movies, on the other hand, are usually watched in a group. The video iPod is great for people to watch old episodes of Rocketboom or last nights Daily Show during their daily commute, but a 120-minute movie is a little too long, unless you’re on an airplane. And most won’t crowd around something the size of your palm. The primary viewing locations are going to range from 42-inch plasmas to 12-inch in-car DVD systems.

Even still, movie downloads are going to take off when the link from the computer to the TV is just as rote as connecting the DVD player. So satellite companies and digital cable companies already have a big headstart, since their machines are already plugged into the TV. Where Apple or another computer hardware company might make this happen is with a wireless connection, ala Wifi. See: Airport Express. I fully expect Apple next generation Airport Express to include a video output, letting my plug into the S-Video or HDMI port of my 37-inch LCD.

Keep in mind, sometimes the secret to the general population excepting a technology advance is by bringing a new piece of hardware into the house. It seems counter-intuitive that you can do great new things like buy movies over the Internet, with the same old stuff you've always had. So make it a new piece of hardware that's affordable, aspirational, technical and easy (Refer to the iPod in 2001).

Fej on Snakes on a Plane

I guess, just as marketers spend a lot of time coming up with ideas, products and technologies that will make you buy more stuff than you need, writers, too, spend a lot of time pondering and writing about potential doomsday scenarios. (As a writer and a marketer I'm guilty on both fronts).

Take the recent furor around Snakes on a Plane. Some would have you think this is the end of the world. Esquire and Salon just for starters.

This Samuel L. Jackson-starring movie caught fire this last winter, partially because one of the rewrite-script scribes is also an avid blogger. A few other things made this really take off in the blogosphere world.
* The 70s-era disaster-film feeling of the title was perfect
* Samuel L. Is a quality actor, who appeared to be attached to a hokey film
* Snakes on a Plane just sounds quirky

It has been widely reported that after the Internet brouhaha grew to an audible crescendo, the cast was called back for five more days of shooting. My assumption for this is the producers realized they might have something here, but with a few nagging question marks in the back of their minds.

My first assumption: the script had been through several writers, and the movie was potentially on the verge of having the directing credit heaped on good ol' Alan Smithee.

My second assumption: the last script writer missed the obvious opportunity to have Samuel L. say "There's mother f**kin snakes on this mother f**kin plane." A line of this sort can be attributed to Samuel L. in just about every movie he has been in - except for maybe Star Wars (though I thought I heard him mutter something about the "mother f**kin Siths" in Attack of the Clones)

My third assumption: the producers decided they wanted to try and make the movie better, befitting of an Internet craze. Keep in mind though, five more days of re-shoots is not the route to perfection. I'm sure they were planning on shining up the turd a bit.

Not delving into the origin of the title (I imagine a perfectly befitting and descriptive working title), Snakes on a Plane is not a test of the blogospheres movie making ability. It is not a sign of Hollywood's demise. It is a cheesy disaster/horror film that will give you exactly what you expect.

For me, I love what Samuel L. said about the simple title: "What are you doing here? It's not Gone with the Wind. It's not On the Waterfront. It's Snakes on a Plane!"

The title tells you exactly what you're going to get. There won't be anything to make you go home and contemplate the moral consequences surrounding incarceration and false rehabilitation, but you will get snakes on a plane.

Protecting Your Baby

With 50 million sold and counting, Apple's iPod is the aspirin of MP3 players. Whether its iPod/iTunes one-two punch will maintain its market dominance in digital music playback and sales is unsure. But don't bet against them yet.

Apple has made a habit of introducing an iPod update about once a year, just in time for the holiday shopping season. And while all of your music is safe, new iPods have brought you more capacity, color screens, digital image viewing, video capability and lower prices. Supposedly some kind of cell phone or wireless connectivity is on the horizon, but let's not talk about that until September.

But with all of the advancements, there are occasionally new problems. As with the latest 5th generation iPod and the iPod Nano's well reported propensity to scratch. Simply putting it in your pocket with say a wallet or mobile phone can result in a series of frustrating and blurring scratches on the front screen and the gleaming silver back. So just as it is important to protect your iPod from serious falls, it is important to protect it from minor bumps and bruises, because these are gadgets aren't free.

Check out Allsop's Slick Skins as a way to protect the body of your iPod. These work like a cross between a sticker and a vinyl window cling. It wraps around the player protecting the screen, the face and the backside. And whether you want to use a clear Slick Skin to show off your good taste, Allsop offers a series of images to let you personalize your player. Simply put: you can make your iPod look a little different than the other 49,999,999 other iPods out there.

One of the benefits of the iPod is its portability, and your ability to take it on the road, to the lake or white water rafting for that matter. This desire to take your player on your adventures makes sense. That way you can actually listen to Eye of the Tiger while you’re running up the steps of your local library, instead of just humming the tune to yourself.

But if you're going to take your iPod or digital camera or cell phone out into the wild, protect it. Allsop's Splash Pack gives you an airtight place to keep out water, sand, grease or Jell-o. But if you're going to take it swimming, you'll need to get some waterproof headphones.

The Splash Pack will let you listen to your favorite music in any atmosphere, while giving you complete access to the clickwheel so you can adjust the volume, browse around your playlists or showoff your iPhoto collection. You can even take pictures with your digital camera while it's in the Splash Pack.

Where Are Your Digital Photos?

The advent of digital photography has led to more pictures being taken, fewer pictures being developed and picture archives measured by the gigabyte. But digital pictures are vulnerable. Now that your memories can be reduced to binary code as nothing more than a bunch of 1s and 0s, how are we taking care of them? How should we be taking care of them?

There are four main formats of digital photo storage.

1. Your computer hard drive - convenient, but not very safe, just in case you have a meltdown.
2. CD-R - Cheap, reliable, but slightly fragile
3. Flash Memory - Small, getting cheaper, but proprietary usually to the brand of camera you have right now.
4. Somewhere on the Internet - There are lot’s of places to store and print your photos. From Wal-Mart and Target to Snapfish and Kodak. And who can ignor Flickr? Easy to share with others, but feels a little like sleeping on your brother-in-law’s couch. Your stuff’s just out there, somewhere.

Don’t trust your computer hard drive. Please. There are just too many things that can go wrong. And since, on average, we as technology users are only printing about 15% of the photos we take with digital cameras, there are a lot memories locked up on your vulnerable hard drive.

Since CD-Rs are the single most popular format for archiving digital photos, Allsop has a few options to make things easier. The Photo CD Gift Envelope let’s you safely send a disc in the mail, but in the form of a greeting card complete with places to write personal message and display your favorite photo. The Photo Disc Album, let’s you keep 20 CD-Rs in one place. It is small and will keep your photos close at hand. Our other photo disc storage products are for archiving. These are great when you’re ready to stick your photo library somewhere for safe keeping.

For flash memory there are memory sticks, SM cards, USB flash drives. If you are using one of these: good for you. They are great for sharing and moving files around, but I’m not sold on them for long term archiving. It’ll require a whole new system of organizing and storage.

As much memory as you might be taking up with digital pictures, just wait until you start taking up even more space with digital home videos. Get in the habit of archiving and backing your system up. It can save a ton of headache in the future.

Women Are Driving Today’s Technology Trends

The digital camera got past being a high-tech toy the moment its sales surpassed film cameras in 2003. Now they are a staple and many households are already moving onto digital camera number two or three. Women are the traditional keepers of the family photo album, so it’s no surprise that women are taking over the digital camera, the home computer and making technology fit in the home, instead of the other way around.

And everybody has been talking about this in the consumer electronics association. Allsop even jumped on the trend with our Bridging Technology and Décor efforts.

In the media most recently, there’s CNET reporting on “Girl Gadgeteers” and Rent-To-Own Online is letting us know about the shrinking difference in Mother’s Day versus Father’s Day Consumer Electronics Sales. These are last week, but reports have been going for a few years now. Just as I think the story is getting old, it crops back up again.

The Consumer Electronics Association is really one group that has really been trying to follow the trend. For three years now, the Consumer Electronics Show has had a “Technology is a Girl’s Best Friend” product showcase. The problem? Practically all of the products in the showcase were geared toward the kitchen. And the lifestyle photos associated with the showcase were retro photos of June Cleaver-like women. This is really the wrong idea. Let’s not get stuck in the outdated women=kitchen stereotype. I know plenty of women who avoid the kitchen and have more hi-tech toys than I do.

I think my wife might have been slightly more excited about the 37-inch LCD purchase we made last Thanksgiving (only slightly, though). And she’s the one who always remembers the camera, and the iPod. And she’ll log more hours on our Powerbook.

A general marketing mantra applies here: lifestyle will outperform strategy every time. When a product or a category hits on a lifestyle trend or creates a lifestyle trend it will take off regardless of the strategy behind it. Technology is letting you save money on photo processing, save even more memories, de-clutter your living area, reclaim your home office, carry your entire music collection with you and call home from anywhere in the world. Technology has hit the point that it can be inculcated into the everyday lifestyle without being strapped to a desk and without lugging around 45 pounds of electronics. And it’s with digital cameras, MP3 players, flat-panel TVs, mobile phones and laptop computers.

Consumers Win By Network Forfeit

Consumer demand will overwhelm corporate protests.

In a Media Daily News story:

Today, to be sure, networks still haven't exactly thrown the DVR threat out
the window. But they appear to at least be coming to terms with the increased
penetration of the devices and the jarring predictions about how many homes
could eventually have them. And they appear to be developing ways to work
around, or even with, them.

And here's a smart, smart solution to getting ads seen without product placement. I call it TiVo-proof advertising. A new take on an old classic.

Adieu, Audiocassette.

Someone is actually saying that cassettes are on the way out. Yesterday. Not 10 years ago. In 2006. Really. I think we have all seen this coming for a long while, yet oh, the memories. My first cassette was Michael Jackson’s Thriller in 1984. My last cassette was Duran Duran 2 (The Wedding Album) in 1993. Not quite 10 years, but the formative years of my independent developing music tastes. Bon Jovi, Keith Sweat, De La Soul, Anthrax, King's X, Seal, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Stanley Jordan, Fugazi, the Chili Peppers…

Oh, the memories and the eaten tapes: The dull, warbled sound and magnetized heads.

Long before I worked at Allsop, I owned several of our audio headcleaners. I only used them when it was too late, for example: after my Subaru stereo ate my Queen Night at the Opera tape. But I used them. And you should, too. I’m sure like me, you have a library of old cassettes. Mine is some 300 tapes strong. They are in these great wall-hanging wood shelves, stuck together, wrapped I duct tape and stuffed in the back of a closet. But they cover a very important time in my musical development. Keep your tapes. And keep a cassette deck cleaner with them. Because when treated correctly, your tapes will always sound just as dull and warbled, but they won’t get eaten by your wretched cassette player.

My Wireless Heaven

I have an iPod. It’s a 3rd generation 10 gig and I absolutely love it. I haven’t upgraded because I haven’t yet been so impressed with new features that I just couldn’t resist. And I see Microsoft is enviously making a move to mimic Apple’s vertical market dominance.

I used to want a cell phone that could play music (yawn). Then I thought I wanted a computer in my car that would connect to my home Wifi network when parked in the garage (still sounds cool, but a little much). With that onboard computer, I could even connect to the Internet when traveling via my cell phone. But there’s the key: my cell phone.

So then I thought I’ve been thinking about the cell phone the wrong way. Here’s what I want my cell phone, or my iPod, to do. I want it to play my 3,000 song music collection, but do it wirelessly. Forget about loading it up with 80 gig of memory to store my songs and photos. Let me buy music from my mobile phone, but download the music to my home network. I want it to connect to my home network, and broadcast from there. Play the music from my Wifi network in my car, or on my headphones or through the desktop speakers in my office. I want access to my photos, my songs, my videos and my email. I want my cell phone to act as my code key for XM or Sirius and broadcast, too. If I have my cell phone with me, I want to broadcast the satellite radio signal through whatever receiving audio system is within range and under my control. Make my mobile phone part of my home network, wherever I am.

I want my cell phone, or my iPod, to become my Mobile Wireless Router. Now that would be cool.