Our good friends at Circuits Assembly Magazine staged a virtual trade show (called Virtual PCB) several months back. According to the organization, VPCB offers:
- On-demand educational presentations
- Attendee-attendee and attendee-exhibitor communication
- Worldwide access to exhibitor booths and sessions
- Downloadable literature and product brochures
- White papers
- Live scheduled group chats with industry experts
- Live group chats with peers
And here is a bit of feedback that, I think, succinctly sums up the feedback received from some participants (as reported by the organization):
"Not nearly as good as an actual PCB Show. Felt isolated and out of touch with other attendees and vendors. Technical content was limited. Really missed out on the interactive networking with peers and face to face activity with vendors. Found that my interests were harder to keep focused because I am actually still at work. People still bug you, phone still rings, email still comes in and the value of this event gets diminished. I did however get something from it: downloaded some product info, watched some technical presentations, emailed a coupled people."
I say that this sort of sentiment is NOT written in stone. A virtual show may soon be THE way to go for many. For whom?:
VENDORS:
Increasing numbers of equipment vendors are finding it harder and harder to justify the total set of costs associated with preparing, shipping, handling, setting up, running, maintaining, downpacking, and returning extremely heavy equipment. Additionally, when the total costs of services (water, electricity, air, gases, etc.) and staffing (packers, shippers, unpackers, set-up staff, operators, packers, shippers, receivers, inspectors, etc.) are added up, things get really expensive.
Materials people often complain that their exhibits can end up looking like a packaging display (with their products hidden inside the containers). And, without process equipment to help show how their products work, there is little value associated with bringing it all to the show.
Vendors are more and more interested in depicting their products' performance in a low-cost but effective manner.
CUSTOMERS:
Customers are also affected by the high costs and distasteful experiences associated with travel. Additionally, they suffer from the "opportunity costs" of attending a trade show - the time away from home, family, and the office/factory. When a show turns out to offer only a few really cool new things and a bunch of retreads from last year, customers have to wonder how they benefitted by travelling hundreds or thousands of miles only to be disappointed.
THE MEDIA:
Often the media wants a story angle, an interview, some video and/or a few good photos. All of these can be obtained via the internet, the phone, etc. Most of the story can be covered in a virtual fashion, saving costs and, sometimes, actually enhancing the story or the time to press.
I agree that virtual trade shows have a way to go before they are really well-suited for everyone involved, but they are alive, happening, and getting better every day. I applaud Circuits Assembly Magazine, and everyone else who experiments with and develops the state-of-the-practice of virtual trade shows. These shows won't solve every issue, and there are certainly times when face-to-face has no substitute. Still, we're on our way to ehancing productivity, effectivity, and profitabilty via the virtual trade show.
Please comment with your experiences and opinions on virtual trade shows.
Jack Leonard:
Rick – Thanks for addressing one of the new media issues that face suppliers and consumers in today’s manufacturing world.
Virtual trade shows certainly have their place in the overall marketing mix. Yet it takes a real trade show to give visitors a chance to touch and feel the ‘big iron’ of process machines.
One possible solution to the problem may be alternating between virtual and face-to-face trade shows on a two year cycle.
Rick Short:
I agree with you, Jack. It really does take the office visit, the face-to-face, and the hands-on to make people comfortable with important purchases and relationships. And a website or phone call can’t create the “bumping into old colleagues” that we tend to value so much. Trade shows seem almost irreplaceable.
The “almost” can be done with online videos, webinars, chats, PDFs, static web pages, and virtual trade shows (a combination of the above).
While trade shows are almost irreplaceable, there are ways to reduce the costs of gaining info and familiarity.
Perhaps trade shows will transform into hyper-effective high-intensity events (where all the small stuff has been dealt with online, previously). We’ll see.
Thanks, Jack!
mike buetow:
Rick,
I can’t thank you enough for bringing virtual trade shows — and Virtual PCB in particular — to the attention of your readers.
What I would add to your blog post and the subsequent comments is that comparing a virtual trade show to a physical event is a mistake. They are not the same, and never will be. A virtual show is truly a new and better online marketing tool. It updates the tired, static web marketing, transforming it to true interactive, “talk with the customer” contact.
Further, as a marketer, consider what you get from advertising on web sites: A dubious list of “hits.” No demographic information. No ability to follow up.
What Virtual PCB offers — and no other show, “online” or otherwise (e.g., IPC) in our industry can say this — is complete and comprehensive demographics of everyone who steps in your booth, how long they stayed, what they looked at, and so on.
In addition to the best reporting tools around, many of the observations you made hold true: Virtual shows permits exhibitors to “show off” their products via live or video tutorials, with no drayage or travel costs.
One equipment company told me they were stuck with a $25,000 tab to move a single machine from the loading dock to their booth. To charge those prices is just greed, pure and simple, and in any case not sustainable. As I’m sure you noted at Apex and SEMICon West this year, exhibitors just aren’t bringing machines to shows like they used to.
Attendees like them, too. While your post mentions the rather lukewarm sentiment from one attendee, nearly 92% of the 1,600 attendees to our first Virtual PCB said they would attend again. Then there’s the reach. In our case, 48% of attendees came from outside the US. That would be unheard of at a physical event.
A booth at our show starts at $5000; that’s priced about the same as a three-month Web marketing campaign. That cost-effectiveness, plus the overwhelming data you receive, makes the shows like Virtual PCB one of the best marketing investments around.
Rick Short:
Mike,
Your insight and comments are so valuable. Thanks for sharing.
I can say that, as a participant in Virtual PCB, we achieved all the benefits that Mike has mentioned.
Virtual trade shows are new and evolving. One thing is for sure – they will get tremendously more valuable as we all learn to make the most of them.