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“We are spoiled now,” Davis-Taylor said. “I don’t want to have to go spend all day walking through a massive trade show. I want to know which [booths] I would be interested in and to have them really easy for me to find, so I can plan my day to have efficiencies and a happy experience. It’s very similar when we are trying to shop, and very similar when we are online.”

DON’T CHANGE THAT OMNICHANNEL Perhaps the biggest problems with trade shows as sales envi- ronments, Zeppa said, is that too many of them are treated by their organizers as entities unto themselves, when instead

“they should be part of an overarching relationship strategy with their target audience, before and after events, and across different mediums.” For retailers, the key term now is

“omnichannel,” Newman said, which seeks to integrate inter- action across multiple channels. “It is not just about mobile

— although mobile is huge,” she said. “It is really about how everything from your online, in-store, and mobile experience comes together.” But being social — and socially networked — is not just

about brands blurting out messages. Rather, it’s about brands engaging with consumers. “Consumers today have less toler- ance for the ‘everything is beautiful’ marketing spiel,” Zeppa said. “They are going to hear a message from a brand and then validate it with groups of individuals that they may not know, but they trust more the brand itself.” Davis-Taylor agrees. “You are going to do better when you

get people to share,” she said, because sharing is an innately human behavior — and thanks to mobile devices, people are more accustomed than ever to sharing information. “If I am at a show and can share [the things I like] with my compadres, why not?” Davis-Taylor said. “I mean, seriously. Talk about a good way to get booth traffic. Seems like such a no-brainer to me, but I think a lot of [exhibitors] don’t know how to do it, or the people who are in charge of the show aren’t giving them the platforms to do it.” And isn’t talking, shopping-behavior expert Underhill asks,

the whole point? When his consumer behavior research and consulting firm, Environsell Inc., exhibits at a trade show, it employs all of its own best advice about engaging attendees.

“We recognize that the purpose of the booth,” Underhill said, “is often to have a 10-minute conversation.”

. Barbara Palmer is senior editor of Convene.

Trade-Show Anthropology Trade-show exhibits, like stores, end up being

“some form of mix of art and science,” said Paco Underhill, founder of the consumer behavioral research firm Environsell Inc., and author of the influential best-seller Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping.

But one of the “poignancies” of the history of trade shows, Underhill said, is that there has been so little science, in the form of research, done to measure how well they achieve their goals. “An enormous amount of money and energy gets put into producing them and constructing them,” Underhill said, “and very little energy or time or money is put into evaluating them.”

It’s a little ironic, because show booths are in a better-than-average position to put research into practice quickly. While the average, non- fashion store may only be redesigned every five to seven years, Underhill said, trade-show booths typically have a two-year lifespan.

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ON THE WEB Trade-show organizers can keep track of consumer trends at trendwatching .com.

The most common way that trade-show organizers and exhibitors do research is through simple surveys, asking people, “Did you visit this booth? Did you like it?” Underhill said. It’s better than nothing, but “the problem with surveys is people are often telling you what they think you want to hear.” A superior method, Underhill said, is to actually observe how attendees behave. Look at things like what percentage of people who approach the booth are greeted, and of those who are greeted or who interact with somebody, how long do they stay? Also watch whether attendees go through the exhibit the way you’ve anticipated. If you have some form of digital programming, how long are people actually looking at it?

Even better than observing these things yourself is to recruit people “to actually take you through your booth,” Underhill said. “It’s a really cool way of being able to see your trade- show exhibit through somebody else’s eyes.”

You don’t necessarily have to hire a research firm to better understand how attendees will interact with your booth, says retail strategist Laura Davis-Taylor. Watch how people navigate trade shows, and “when you are out, watch people shop; watch people when they are in parks and interacting with each other,” Davis- Taylor said. “Once you are thinking about it, you’ll see patterns and you get little nuggets of insight.”

44 PCMA CONVENE JULY 2012

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