Trade shows: where are they headed?

At its height in the mid 1980s Comdex just about took over Las Vegas. Visitors to the giant week-long expo were bussed in from overflow accommodation as far away as southern California and northern Arizona. The queues were legendary and for just about everything from taxis to fast food outlets.

Major IT companies even mounted their own shows. One of the largest was an annual bash organised by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It booked out Boston. The company had to hire cruise liners and moor them in Boston's harbour to handle accommodation for the thousands that thronged the event.

On a smaller scale, the major PC/IT show in Australia saw visitor numbers grow from about 25,000 for the first such show in 1983 to top 50,000 by the late '80s. Since then it has been all downhill. Comdex collapsed--its organisers filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. DEC was taken over by Compaq in 1998 and that company was taken over by Hewlett-Packard. Locally, the IT trade show has vanished from the events calendar.

IT companies have shunned the generic IT show in favour of a variety of other marketing approaches. These range from mounting their own road shows through to half-day seminars, business lunches, and targeting specific industries that feature their own trade shows.

Be specific!
Ironically, the end of the IT trade show comes at a time when other industry-specific events are growing. Australian Exhibition Services (AES)--a major organiser of trade shows--estimates there were about 350 exhibitions/trade shows in Australia last year and these attracted almost 11,000 exhibitors.

Graham Selby, managing director of AES, says the company founded its business on PC exhibitions--starting with the first in 1983. "Then the IT industry was awash with marketing dollars," Selby says. "It was inevitable we would attract competition. Networld came along, then Interop and ATUG had its own show. In Sydney alone there was a total of 20,000 square metres of space for IT shows in one year.

"By the early '90s we decided to diversify into other markets," Selby says. These included trade shows for food manufacturers and one for the building design and construction industry.

"We get some IT companies at these shows aiming for those particular industries," Selby adds. "But we're not planning any further specific IT events for the time being."

Selby says trade shows for individual industries are booming. "I believe a growing number of companies see these exhibitions and trade shows as better value for money than advertising in general purpose media or the trade press," he says.

"The shows put you face-to-face with your customers and prospects."

The Australian Telecommunications Users Group (ATUG) was one industry body running a major trade show with its annual conference. "We walked away from the trade show three years ago," says Beth Mackenzie, ATUG's national business development manager.

"We felt exhibitors were not getting the return on the investment in the exhibition. I think CeBIT is the only IT show left in the world and I believe it's heavily subsidised by the German government.

"We wanted to get back to grass roots for our members with the annual conference," Mackenzie says. This year it attracted more than 150 delegates for the two-day event at a hotel in Sydney's CBD. "It's an important event for our members to network with each other," Mackenzie adds.

Not everyone agrees with the focused approach. According to Jackie Taranto, Managing Director of Hannover Fairs Australia, "Over the past years in Australia we have seen a proliferation of niche exhibitions in the ICT sector. We believe this approach is inappropriate because of two factors. Firstly, technologies are converging. Where is the dividing line between information (traditionally computers) and communications (traditionally phones)? Secondly, business visitors don't necessarily have the time to attend niche shows, we believe rather that they want to see the complete range of solutions--including hardware, software, and services across the range of technologies. This has always been the CeBIT approach: to produce a exhibition that covers the complete range of ICT."

Turning back the clock
The aspect of using the IT trade shows of old as a networking venue has seen IT professionals turn back to such events as ACS conferences to mix and mingle with their peers.

"We're seeing a steady increase in the number of people attending our conferences," says Dennis Furini, general manager of the Australian Computer Society (ACS). "I believe the death of the general purpose trade show means more IT professionals are using ACS events to network with colleagues as well as keeping up with what's happening in the profession.

"Take a look at the 'What's On' sections in the IT media," Furini says. "They're full of events being staged by ACS branches around Australia."

It was the ACS itself that kicked off the whole IT show phenomenon. It was back in 1974 when the professional society organised a trade show to coincide with its biennial national conference.

The arrival of the PC in the early 1980s sparked a greater public awareness in computers. It also generated the first wave of computers aimed at home users.

Companies no longer in the computer business such as Texas Instruments and some out of business all together--like Commodore and Atari--flocked to the early PC shows.

In their heyday PC/IT shows featured stands that cost as much to build as an average suburban house. They sometimes even covered two storeys. Stands were simply demolished at the end of the week-long show.

As well as the cost of the stand, exhibitors had to round up sales and marketing employees--frequently from interstate--to staff the stand.

Today's tight economic conditions see IT companies using a using a mix of marketing plans to get organisations to continue to buy their products and services. Most of them agree there is little value in general purpose IT shows, even if they were still being organised.

The way of the seminar
IDS Enterprise Systems develops ERP systems for the automotive and durable goods industries. The Australian-owned company employs more than 100 software developers. Its customers include General Motors-Holden, Panasonic Australia, and Volkswagen Australia.

Gordon Towell, managing director of IDS, says the company has used a mix of general purpose and vertical industry trade shows. "We've even used CeBIT," Towell says.

Towell says the most successful marketing exercise it recently undertook was a half-day seminar, "Business Leaders' Summit" with speakers from IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers. "We did the invitations ourselves to a carefully selected list of prospects," Towell says. "We had a very good group of people--precisely what we needed. The event gave us 30 solid sales leads and resulted in preparing 12 quotes.

"It was a much better return than a trade show where most of the people passing the stand are barely related to what we do and we hand out boxes of literature to gaggles of scruffy students," Towell says. "You could spend a week at the show and only get one or two leads."

IDS is also looking at taking part in a conference of automotive parts makers' later this year in Thailand. The company has a branch office there as well as offices in Indonesia and the UK.

Mercury Interactive--in the performance management business--also favours seminars but goes for a shorter duration. These generally last about an hour and include a light lunch for those who want to continue discussing the topic covered by the seminar.

Paul Willey, technical marketing manager for the company, says it's important to give those attending the seminars solid information. "It's got to be more than a sales pitch," Willey says. "We want them to go away with something they've learnt."

Mercury Interactive's seminars are generally roundtable affairs with no more than a dozen or so people attending.

Taking the lead
Hummingbird, a documents management specialist, is using a combination of road shows and taking stands at specific exhibitions. Melissa Bennett, marketing manager at the company, says the payoff for the investment in general purpose shows is very low.

"Our focus is lead generation," Bennett says. "Whatever we do, we have to generate leads. Branding is a secondary consideration.

"We took part in Interop last year and decided then to walk away [from these shows]." Recent events Hummingbird has supported include the annual event of the Records Management Association of Australia and an event aimed at local governments.

"The networking aspect is very important," Bennett adds. "I've just attended a seminar aimed at marketing managers so I could do some networking and find out what other companies are doing to get across the marketing message."

QAS is a company that optimises database management systems. The company's address book management systems are widely used by organisations operating call centres.

Glenn Parker, QAS managing director in Australia, favours general purpose shows but says it's becoming harder to justify taking part in them.

"We recently had a stand at Customer Contact World," Parker says. "The numbers were disappointing. This year there were only about 2000 attending. That was down from 3200 last year which was also well down on the previous year.

"While the numbers are getting worse, these shows still tend to be better than a highly targeted vertical show aimed at just a specific market or industry," Parker says.

He adds that results we still justify the investment in a show. "We may spend $30,000 on taking part in a show but we get results that more than justify that investment," he says.

Do it yourself
Some IT companies have never been involved in trade shows or exhibitions. SAS Institute runs an annual one-day event for customers and prospects.

Last year more than 700 people attended the conference which featured keynote speakers from the US and Europe. This year the company is expecting more than 1000 to attend its user conference to be held in Sydney.

"We have done a lot of research and find this type of event works best for us," Says Deirdre Brannick, marketing communications manager for SAS.

"Sydney-based people can easily justify a day out of the office," says Brannick. "We also run a one-day training session following the conference.

"This works especially well for people from interstate. They can easily justify two days out of the office and the cost of interstate travel," she says. "They are getting the user conference and associated networking plus training in our products."

Several of SAS's partners including Unisys and Management Information Principles had small display stands at the SAS event.

But there are some companies which believe the general purpose IT show was good value and look forward to its return.

MailGuard offers an e-mail security service for users of ASPs (application service providers). Andrew Johnson, the company's marketing director, says the general IT show was good value for the company.

"Our experience with these shows has been good," Johnson says. "We believe they were more effective for us than advertising. They exposed us to a lot of small to medium size businesses--our target market."

MailGuard is now turning to shows that involve its channel partners. "The dollars involved is about the same as a general PC show," Johnson says. "You probably get similar levels of business but with the general show you get a lot more people seeing you and that's important for us," he says.

At AES, Graham Selby doubts the general IT show will ever return. "We ran more than 40 of them over the years," he says. "At the peak of the boom we ran the PC/IT show in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney in the same year.

"Computers have become commodity items. There's now only a handful of major companies in the business and one of them, Dell, only sells direct."

"We can't see the general purpose computer show making a comeback," Selby says. "The trend will be for more user-related style exhibitions or seminars."

CeBIT Australia 2003 will be held at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre from 6-8 May.

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