It is well established by now: among people’s primary objectives in attending an event are the chance to widen their network and to discover things useful to their work and career. That makes the highest value-added places within an event — whether physical, virtual or hybrid — all the spaces purpose-built for socialising (halls, relaxation and networking areas) and those given over to meeting and exchange, as the exhibition areas are, where companies and individuals can meet, discover products and services and get information tailored to offers that matter to them.
In both socialising spaces and exhibition areas, however, the capacity to produce results is often directly proportional to the investment made in designing, building and running them — since the spaces have to be comfortable, practical and pleasant if people are to come and stay, and the stands have to be attractive, rich and functional if they are to draw people in and hold them. So is there a way of keeping standards high without letting costs explode?
Considerable help, for a change, can come from technology — and in particular from the technology applied and applicable to exhibition areas. Moving all or part of an event’s exhibition area online can be the way to kill two birds with one stone, as the saying goes. The first bird is keeping costs under control without denting the return these spaces deliver, and the second is gaining a whole set of benefits that would otherwise be far harder to reach and, often, far more expensive. Which ones? Here are three.
1. Global accessibility
A virtual exhibition area is accessible from anywhere in the world at any time, with no limits of space or time and regardless of latitude or time zone. So while a traditional exhibition area can host only a limited number of attendees and exhibitors, a virtual one lets companies present their products or services from anywhere in the world without facing the costs of attending in person.
And it can be done in two ways:
1) by replacing the physical presence with an online one entirely
2) by keeping a physical foothold — a small stand, for instance — used as a gateway to a richer, more structured world that lives online and that can deliver rewarding, useful experiences at a fraction of what it would cost to bring all the necessary technology physically to the event.
These solutions do not, of course, work for every type of exhibitor and every business (innovative as they are, online tastings are still fairly disappointing next to the traditional kind), but they can certainly be interesting propositions — commercially too — for many companies, a good number of which would otherwise be out of reach or harder to involve.
2. Reduced environmental impact
A virtual exhibition area is an excellent environmental resource. Technology has its own environmental impact too, certainly, but it can rarely compete with what it takes to produce, build and run an exhibition space that then, more often than not, has to be transported a long way from where it was made. Simply by cutting the costs of travel and of producing physical materials, a virtual stand can significantly reduce its environmental footprint, cutting emissions and the use of natural resources. And that translates immediately not only into a positive impact on the environment we live in and that we will leave to the generations after us, but also on the image of the event and of everyone taking part — since sustainability is well known to be one of the strongest marketing levers there is today.
3. Advanced interactivity and tracking
Bringing high levels of technology into exhibition spaces also lets you do two things: produce data — since anything digital is more easily measured and therefore useful for later analysis and planning — and offer more interactive, more personalised experiences, potentially right up to complete customisation, in virtual environments that can include video, presentations, images, interactive demos and more. That lets presentations of products and services become exponentially more innovative and engaging, capable of catching the attention of an ever more demanding audience and stirring its interest. It also lets each person move at their own pace, according to their own need for information and understanding, and interact with company representatives at the time and in the way that makes for a genuinely rewarding experience.
Using technology to support the effectiveness and efficiency of strategic spaces such as exhibition areas can therefore be not only a way of meeting the needs of an ever more demanding audience, but also of producing results that are more concrete, more measurable and therefore more usable for the companies taking part — without costs rising in proportion. A win-win outcome that is hard to leave on the table when you are setting out to create events that genuinely stand out in an ever more competitive market.