Not A Designer? That’s Okay!
Not a Designer? That’s OK, you’re probably also not a Certified Public Accountant, but you still get your taxes filed. You’re likely not a lawyer, but your business still enters into contractual agreements. Every once in a while there are functions that a business needs to outsource to experts and the design of a trade show environment is one of them.
Solutions for an effective trade show design run the gamut from simple to complex. Your Designer and Exhibit solution provider need to operate in your interest and not propose “something” because that is all they have to sell! Look for a provider that offers a wide breadth of products. In fact, “buying” a booth might be a waste of your money, so also seek the option of renting a customized solution to preserve capital and retain flexibility going forward.
Whether a display need is a small portable booth, a purely custom fabricated large island design, or a hybrid Custom-Modular solution, to varying degrees the design process has to address functionality, aesthetics and messaging. Particularly on larger projects, deciding on what company you want to work with to refine and develop the final solution should be (at least if not) more important than deciding between pretty pictures!
As our firm’s products and services have evolved over the years we now find ourselves competing against traditional Custom Houses as often as we compete against internet catalog companies. Part of our Unique Selling Proposition vs. the old world Custom Houses is to be able to provide both design and execution of a booth and related services that are on-par or superior but at a lower cost-of-ownership point. Conversely, most clients that compare online vendors to working with our Marketing Consultants often come to realize that just a bit of the interaction they experience in our Discovery Process will generally make up for any price discrepancies many times over.
In the same way we understand positioning of our brand, your designer needs to ferret out your target audience(s); offer solution options that will allow for the greatest return on your exhibit marketing objectives and have the capacity to not only meet and exceed your expectations, but to have contingencies as required by the world of trade shows.
By: Steve Hoffman – July 20, 2017
