While geographically expansive, the world of pro audio is modestly populated. In any specific sector, the key players comprise a small but extremely mobile club. It’s a ‘people business’ – perfectly suited to a trade show’s ability to bring people together.
In reality, while a show might appear big and busy, it can easily be exhausting, exasperating and expensive. Now there’s an alternative…
Rich in people and politics, a trade show floor is a lively place. Some of it good, some of it less so. Big sales and important agreements have been made – or at least, announced – from the show floor. But there is frequently a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction lapping at attendees’ ankles.
Some shows and show organisers are roundly resented – even by their most loyal exhibitors. That resentment is never stronger than when exhibitors feel they are obliged, for whatever reason, to participate.
There are usually plentiful suggestions as to how trade shows might be adapted, merged, rescheduled and generally improved. The majority of these are rendered impractical by considerations ranging from geography and timing to the commercial interests of the show organisers. Some of them are simply incompatible. There is no consensus.
Showdown
I have an interview planned to discuss one man’s ambition to bring something genuinely new into play. Fittingly, this is to take place at a trade show. Tellingly, we fail to make contact.
‘I'm really sorry we didn't meet,’ says Paul Nicholson, when we eventually do hook up. ‘That's one of the problems with trade shows – we were in the same room but couldn't connect…’
Nicholson’s plan has a name: VirtualXpo. ‘The world of exhibitions and B2B marketing has been reborn for the 21st century,’ its marketing asserts. ‘After 12 months of intensive research and planning, VirtualXpo is going to radically change the way that technology manufacturers and service companies do business, not only in the entertainment production field but across a broad spectrum of industries worldwide.’
Nicholson admits to having become ‘increasingly frustrated with the outmoded, traditional methods of promoting the business and seeing little in the way of tangible results’. At the heart of the scheme is the VX Super App, ‘a multimedia marketplace in which any company can exhibit and anyone can attend wherever they happen to be in the world’.
‘My initial aims were to save money, time and the environment, and create a revolutionary marketing platform that would allow any company or individual to reach a mass market faster, better and cheaper, without any time or geographical constraints,’ he elaborates. ‘It soon became apparent that the VX app would become a game changing, de facto marketing and sales platform for any industry. And, although the VX concept was devised as a companion or an alternative to a trade show, it evolved quickly into a standalone multimedia platform capable of supporting and enhancing any marketing scenario.’
This is the kind of inspired thinking that comes from attending many trade shows, sharing their frustrations and enjoying a long period of consideration…
‘The project was actually conceived in literally 60 seconds,’ Nicholson quips. ‘I was stuck in traffic on the way to a trade show and I thought there must be a better way to market a company and its products than the usual trade show and magazine routes. The word “virtual” sprang into my head and the VX app concept and features were born.’
There has been talk of ‘virtual’ trade shows for almost as long as the internet has been defining its role in business. From navigable 3D ‘rooms’ filled with stands to chat room-style threads of communication, the virtual show has lingered on the fringes of real-world trade shows. Until now, it’s been all talk…
How should virtual shows be presented? How would they be funded? Who would build them? How would they relate to conventional shows? Nicholson has answers, and is in no doubt of the intended relationship between old style trade shows and his new venture.
Face values in a virtual world
‘We are, indeed, presenting a challenge to the “old-style” trade show as you put it,’ he says. ‘The genre is certainly outmoded and must evolve if it’s going to survive in the long term.
‘The big issue is that in any vertical, exhibitors are lucky to get ten per cent of the show visitors on their stand, with maybe just one-to-two per cent of those visits turning into sales.
‘The economics just don’t stack up, especially when you factor in the cost of the floor space, structures, products, logistics, admin, staff and so on. We want to work with exhibition organisers to evolve and transform their halls into meeting places where business can be discussed in quiet, green environments, and products can be viewed on interactive screens and mobile devices. It simply makes sense to deliver a better economic model.
‘We will be able to free up real world floor space through less reliance on product presence. As a result, more companies will be able to attend on terra firma as well as via the Cloud. It’s a win-win situation, and trade show associations shouldn’t consider us to be a competitor; we are quite the opposite, in fact. We’re here to help everyone achieve better results.’
And the one-on-one encounters that are at the heart of traditional shows?
‘We will have virtual meeting rooms, classrooms, webinars and auto translation SMS built into the app, plus the networks,’ comes the confident reply. ‘We will be encouraging people to travel less and use virtual communications as much as possible, and for all the right reasons.
‘However, we will still encourage face-to-face meetings and live events when necessary. Back in January, when we tested the initial concept, companies commented that having their products displayed in a multimedia format on a tablet would free them up like never before to visit clients without the need to drag vast amounts of equipment along with them. It’s a leaner, greener, cost-effective strategy.’
Green is a recurrent theme in Nicholson’s thinking. Reducing the need to travel is an obvious consideration but there’s more…
‘In the past two years, I haven’t bought a single printed magazine,’ he says. ‘I now read Wired, Wallpaper, The Times and many more online. It’s a greener and far more immersive way of getting a media hit. In fact, this was one of the catalysts for VX.
‘In addition, advertising is clearly a big part of magazine content and I wanted to move things forward even further by building analytics and multimedia into the app ads, to allow our customers to monitor their campaigns and, of course, their site visitors in real time. We’ve called our analytics bolt-on Fingerprint, and it’s one of the most eagerly anticipated functions of the app.’
Social etiquette
Supporting the app, VirtualXpo will call on a selection of social media. With so many options, so many claims to form, function and audience, and the fickle forces of fashion and finance in play their choice will be important. ‘The team looked at all the leading social media sites and we settled on five,’ Nicholson states. ‘Facebook and Twitter were the obvious first choices, and we took a vote on the rest having analysed their reach.
‘We’ll launch our own industry specific networks in 2013 which will allow B2B, B2C and P2P relationships to flourish. It’s important to keep business conversations going, and the world needs networks based on business, rather than yet more social sites.’
With the launch of VirtualXpo set for January 2013, it is clear that the team sees much work ahead. While app building is a big part of this, other aspects of the project will be fine-tuned by the reception it receives from the industry in the interim. This market research is already well underway.
‘We spent four days at Plasa 2012, with the organisation’s consent, and pitched to around 80 companies,’ Nicholson reports. ‘Only one of these was lukewarm; the rest were eager to take things forward with us.
‘It was an interesting exercise, because the more forward-thinking and future-minded companies were giving us some very inspirational feedback that may help to form new app features. People clearly see the logic in what we’ve put together and some are now considering switching from their websites and into our app while re-evaluating their trade show stand configurations.
‘We’ll be launching our multimedia client pack and rate card in October and releasing the app on 1 January, with the first event – i/O (for the show technology market) – arriving a few weeks later.’
VirtualXpo will also be rolling out the VX platform across a range of global industries from early 2013. Anyone wanting to track important news and updates ahead of the launch, can subscribe to a newsletter via the VirtualXpo website.
More: www.virtualxpo.com
