Dean Schwartz
Dean is CEO and SWAGmaster at SOBO Concepts, a promotional products company delivering "SWAG with Style".
If you’re an invested business owner, then you are constantly looking for every edge possible to help differentiate your products and services from the competition.
Well, trade show management companies are no different. With you folks in mind, we’ve developed some creative ideas for helping exhibitors to enhance their bottom line and show some personality – and some SWAG, too.
Ready for that? Good. The first idea is to develop unique, never-been-seen-before event materials and the second is giveaways, for both the show and its exhibitors.
The benefits of this approach are two-fold:
1. A show is the perfect opportunity for companies to use their own promotional products to add a sense of personality to their brand, promote a memorable theme, and stand out in a sea of boring, SWAG-less cookie-cutter conferences.
2. By offering exhibitors marketing services around the design and execution of unique SWAG, a show can earn a portion of the merchandise revenue while increasing exhibitors’ happiness and retention. It’s win-win to the max.
What’s the alternative? Well, you’ve seen it before. Merely slapping logos on pens and coffee mugs is not enough. And it sucks. To execute on this approach and do it well, most show management companies need to engage with a strategic promotional products company with vast creative experience and the ability to draw on a large network of suppliers.
This partner should act as a marketing agency that places an emphasis on using physical products to promote the message.
And guess what? Often times, that creative promotional products company can employ physical products as a gateway to the virtual world with something like augmented reality technology. In doing so, they take this idea of differentiating the trade show itself while also helping exhibitors stand out to another level.
The best part? Augmented reality is easier to deploy to an entire trade show than you might think. There is a branded augmented reality app available that integrates the technology into a company’s preexisting app. This sets the stage for promoting and gamifying the show in fun new ways, meaning that you’ll keep someone’s attention long after they’ve left your booth and moved on.
It also presents another opportunity for the show to help exhibitors by leveraging the same technology platform to integrate digital content with their promotional products, literally duplicating the efforts of something that does quite well on its own, and even better with the SWAG of augmented reality.
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