Emma Exhibitor: Hi Tim, how are things on your end?

Tim Trade Fair: Not that easy – I can tell you that much! But we’re using these crazy times to think very hard about what the trade fair of tomorrow will look like.

Emma Exhibitor: Well that sounds practically harmless. You’ve just about dropped to zero. Talk about a hard brake at full speed! I mean, the importance of trade shows was already being discussed anyway, but we’re looking at an entirely different order of magnitude here, aren’t we?

Tim Trade Fair: Unfortunately yes. Due to COVID-19, we’ve already lost about half of our revenue. If we’re not able to get going again this fall/winter, we’re going to need a full restructuring and entirely new financing. Consolidations were familiar before, but this is really a different order of magnitude. But how do you deal with the fact that trade shows just aren’t happening right now?

Emma Exhibitor: To be honest, that’s not so easy for us either. The dominant big companies, giants like Apple, it’s easy for them to talk. They’ve got new products and they get people’s attention anyway. But they’re not the market. The broad mass of companies like us need external forums with appeal. We can only do this to a limited extent on our own. Sales needs special occasions, a thematic bundling where we have the place to shine.

Tim Trade Fair: Ach, bisher habt ihr doch meist auf die Kosten geschimpft und jetzt vermisst ihr uns?

Emma Exhibitor: Of course (grins), but in the end we’d always had big inhibitions about saving money for trade shows. My sales reps were always ready to cut back my sales plans at the slightest hint. But now a whole lot more is in flames. Not only classic exhibitions like yours, but also in-house trade shows and our permanent showrooms.

Tim Trade Fair: But why your showrooms, too?

Emma Exhibitor: Before we relied pretty heavily on in-house showrooms. Now we see that the digital technologies we developed as short-notice alternatives work just about as well. And we believe that we can really cut costs that way – obviously that’s very much in focus at the moment.

Tim Trade Fair: Really?? Are you going to completely switch to digital or what? And what about personal contact? And anyway you need fixed times in the year so that your projects and materials can get finished in the first place (smiles challengingly)...And what’s with the tangible experience, with trying things out or just letting colors work in the original?

Emma Exhibitor: Okay, okay – we see a lot of those things the same way you do. But we’re thinking in terms of hybrid solutions mixing personal contact, on-location experimenting and experiencing and massive digital support. One thing is clear: The desire to exchange and maintain networks is still there. We see this in every conversation with customers. But we supplement this with digital technologies, such as through a small digital film studio we set up for that purpose.

Tim Trade Fair: A film studio – you can come to us for that, too. We’re also working on just that kind of hybrid solution right now. We call it a “digital broadcasting station” or “content environment”. We increasingly view our exhibitions as thematic landscapes for which we have to keep improving our editorial competence. That’s not entirely new. Then we have to stage this physically on location and much more virtually as well.

Emma Exhibitor: Sounds good, but that doesn’t change anything about the fact that, for better or for worse, you’ll have to get ready for significantly lower visitor numbers. We, for example, definitely won’t be able to keep sending out 200 employees like before. I don’t need to tell you how expensive that is with overnight accommodations and everything – and we were hardly seeing a real return on that anyway. And who still writes orders on location anymore?

Tim Trade Fair: That’s debatable. We still believe that a few flagships – i.e., relevant leading shows – will still be able to survive at a reasonable size. But you’re right about where the trend is heading. Some floor space and especially on-location visitor traffic will shrink, but digital visitors will also attend alongside the “real” ones, so the accompanying program will become noticeably more virtual.

Emma Exhibitor: Let’s get a little more specific.

Tim Trade Fair: Gladly. In theory all this has actually already been addressed (smiles knowingly). Take show A, clearly focused and a good choice of display window into the industry. And then there’s a good amount of exhibitor interest, also because the topic is well staged with regard to the times. Then we collaborate with journalists, industry experts, suitable celebrities...We’re an excellent communication opportunity. And on location we’d also see about a third of the visitors we had before.

Emma Exhibitor: So few visitors! A disaster for you guys! You might as well go ahead and close up shop.

Tim Trade Fair: Quite the opposite! When we include our virtual visitors, overall we’re doing better than the previous year. We help companies “broadcast” digitally to the web from our event – live, time delayed, with QA sessions, supplemented by cut-in films, graphics, etc. – so it can be received anywhere in the world: by partners, customers or the company’s employees. You can book support through us or obviously you can take care of that yourself. And you can book as a package program just like before. In the future we’ll be able to offer even more content, just more digitally.

Emma Exhibitor: I can already guess the new products...

Tim Trade Fair: Obviously – sponsoring, placements, broadcast spaces like “my company in the opening trailer” or naming privileges for shows like round tables, and a whole lot more.

Emma Exhibitor: You know what? I can actually see that. Simply because we’re thinking in the same direction for our own events. For example, this applies to our big executive conference. The anchor point for the event is a small studio, and our CEO will sit there too and be interviewed live. But the speakers are based all over the world and we’ll be doing digital work groups. From the tech standpoint it’s working pretty well, but we still have a few things to learn about dramatization. That’s no longer one-to-one like before. Something has really started to change there. And it will stay that way after COVID-19, too. But let’s take off the rose-colored glasses for a minute. Do you really think we still need all of the existing formats?

Tim Trade Fair: I have to say this quietly, but...of course not! From a value-creation perspective, formats will consolidate. If we’re bringing participants together who don’t really need to network with each other, then the format has poor chances of survival. What has to be our goal is being, remaining or becoming a truly meaningful hub for the industry in question.

Emma Exhibitor: But to come back to the point that you still have to fill your venues: Do you think that you’ll always be able to fill the floors with concepts like the “digital broadcasting station” or hybrid events? And won’t all those visitors who are now paying less hurt you, anyway?

Tim Trade Fair: Actually we’re currently thinking very hard about other ways to use the spaces. For highly professional digital broadcasting by exhibitors to their customers, for example, or for network maintenance or knowledge transfer for our guests. But we’re not naive, and obviously we’re also thinking about concepts that require less space. The cost pressure isn’t going to let up.

Emma Exhibitor: Ditto. And for us the question remains of how else we can use what we’ve saved on trade shows, showrooms, travel costs, etc. in order to generate profit. An in-house studio and more digitalization and video in marketing is one approach here. The intelligent program is something we’re still developing. By the way, a booth builder helped us with the backdrops – so with a green screen and variable adjustments.

Tim Trade Fair: Yeah, we’re talking about that, too. “The next-generation fair booth” – less meeting rooms, but with good broadcasting possibilities and planned for use with other forms of staging. Now dramaturgy and creativity are becoming part of the strategy.

Emma Exhibitor: That’s exactly right. The topic keeps becoming more and more comprehensive. Really it always comes down to a mix of commercial considerations, strategy, communication and creativity.

Tim Trade Fair: Yep, I’m right there with you. What we’d really need are partners who can cover both sides. Or at least specialists who work well together.

Emma Exhibitor: Ha! Dream on. That’ll never work. After all, business consultants and communications consultants are arch enemies. Everybody knows that; they wouldn’t give each other the time of day...