What’s The Best Pop-up Display Orientation For Your Booth?
Pop-up displays are most commonly used in a trade show booth as a backwall; it’s an efficient and economical solution for many exhibitors.
If your company is looking for ways to go beyond basic with your pop-up displays, you can get excellent results and increased traffic by changing the orientation and arrangement of your pop-ups, and making the biggest impression possible given the specific space you have to work with. Start with a basic understanding of the most common set-up rules used by trade shows, add a little creativity, and you may be surprised at the attention-grabbing configurations you can come up with!
- Inline Booth – A standard inline booth is a 10 by 10-foot space in an aisle that backs up to another aisle of booths. The backwall height of a standard booth is almost always eight feet at U.S. trade shows, and in many cases, you’ll be limited to that height for everything you place in your booth. Some shows allow exhibitors to pay for permission to use taller elements in an inline booth, but in general, everything in the back half of your booth will need to be no more than eight feet high, and everything in the front half of the booth will need to be a maximum of four feet tall, to prevent obstructing view of neighboring booths. If you get a corner space, you may be allowed to remove the divider on the aisle-facing side of your booth for added visibility and access.
This standard booth space offers less flexibility to change the orientation of your pop-ups, but you still have some options to make your booth a standout. Placing a pair of eight-foot, triangle-footprint towers in the back corners of your booth is a space-efficient way to add impact and re-orient your imagery. If you use backlit towers for this application, it can help draw visitors’ attention all the way through your space, instead of just at the front, by eliminating the impression of dark corners “way back there.” Adding a backlit table or display cube at the front of the booth can tie the look together and attract more attention by adding still more light.
- Perimeter Booth – The perimeter booth is very similar to the inline booth, except that it backs up to a wall, so you’re typically allowed a maximum rear height of 12 feet, and you’re likely to have the option of going up to 16 feet for an additional fee. Attendees often use perimeter aisles as expressways to get from point A to point B without having to push their way through the more crowded center. Plan your exhibit to grab their attention and stop them in their tracks!
This is a perfect application for a multimedia or interactive display. Light and motion are strong attractants, and if you combine those with an opportunity to interact with something fun or watch something interesting, you’re more likely to succeed. Use towers with monitor mounts at the rear of your exhibit, and your message will be high enough to be seen from a greater distance, or make your entire backwall a multimedia display with a rear-projector screen and custom graphic surround.
- Island Versus Peninsula – Peninsula booths (bounded on three sides by aisles, backing up on other booths) and island booths (surrounded by aisles on all sides) give you the most flexible set of options for arrangement, orientation, and traffic flow in your trade show exhibit. A peninsula space may be limited in height to match the booths it backs up on, but island spaces usually allow heights of 16 to 20 feet, depending on the specific venue and event.
Even in such a large space with open access, all the way around, creatively placed pop-up exhibits can make a big visual impact. One good tactic for these open spaces is to place your big visuals in the center. You can do this with towers, which point your message in three or four directions at once, or by using pop-up backwalls or projection walls to create a triangle or square in the center of your space to give visitors the big picture from every angle. This also provides you with a space to store cases and boxes out of public sight during the show.
Skyline Exhibits offers complete trade show marketing support, from full-service sales and rentals to expert advice like the best pop-up display orientation for an exhibitor’s specific space and marketing objectives.
By: Cam Rooney – October 20, 2016
