Trade shows
OK, I'm just out of the box today. Trade shows are a communication medium, so this fits in the state of the media.
I just got an email from the In-Stat folks saying they are shutting down the Microprocessor Forum in the US for 2008 and are replacing it with a series of, as yet, undefined, one-day conferences. Attendance at the MPF this year was abysmal so it no longer made financial sense for Reed to continue funding it.
The MPF is supposed to be one of the more prestigious events for semiconductor companies to be featured at. Every year I get requests from clients to set up press meetings at the conference, which is one of the tougher places to get meetings. And now it's gone.
Trade shows are showing the same strain as print, at least in the US and probably Europe. They took an enormous hit after the dotcom meltdown at the turn of the century and another after 9/11 (Everyone was afraid of flying).
But I saw a couple of news releases tooting the CES horn that they anticipate another 4 percent growth this year, which still doesn't get them back to what they were pre-meltdown. So I started looking through the web to find out what other trade shows are saying. It's the same thing. Two percent here, three percent there. "Oh we were down this year because of our location." That was the Design Automation Conference's excuse this year. Next year they're in Anaheim and then SF.
The bottom line is that at best, trade shows in the US are stagnant. They are not growing. That's not a good sign. Especially for startups. And more large companies are investing in proprietary shows that can ace out competitors. That's where the real growth is in the US.
However, I also found that in places like Mexico, Taiwan and India, trade shows are booming. A machining conference in Mexico reported a 42 percent increase in attendance.
Once again, the clear cut ways of getting your story out to the market is turning into an amorphous blob. If you want to continue marketing your company the way you are used to, time to get out of the US altogether.
Can you say "DAC 2010 in New Dehli?"
Indeed! I'll tell you though, the model for small, focused, regional one-day events is brutal and tight. CMP tried it 18 months ago and it's hard to make it work, even on paper.
ReplyDeleteTo you broader point, Lou, I don't think events are dead at all. Web 2.0 is massive. Oracle OpenWorld is going to swamp San Francisco in a few days.
Why it's not working in a big industry like semiconductors, though, is a bit of a head-scratcher. Are the bean-counters winning the day?
Ah, but OpenWorld is driven by a single company with a market cap bigger than many industries. And while Web 2.0 isw big, there is some question whether it will survived the coming bubble bust.
ReplyDeleteBut your point about the bean counters is probably more accurate. The companies in the software and web industries are much more market driven than semiconductors, which is probably why their conferences are failing.
To make any trade show or conference work in terms of numbers, you need some kind of buzz around the sector. I don't mean promotion, it's belief that this market's going somewhere; that somehow "this business is gonna be big". Sooner of later, that feeling evaporates. But, while it lasts, the conference or show attracts way more attention (and stand space) than the real size of the economy justifies. The skill is in identifying sectors with those characteristics. But it also means they all have a limited shelf life - the other skill is in getting out before you lost your shirt.
ReplyDeleteMPF's heyday was when people cared about processor architectures. People thought that taking on Intel with an alternative architecture was a viable proposition in the 90s. Once that belief disappeared, MPF was dead on its feet. Michael Slater very successfully called the top of that market by selling up to In-Stat.
Since then, it's been increasingly yawnmongous. "Oh look, another VLIW SIMD engine for multimedia, what a surprise." I think I realised it was over when ARM launched its SIMD extensions (that might have been EPF rather than MPF). I declined the briefing with the words (approximately): "SIMD extensions all look pretty much the same. Let me know if there are any unusual instructions in there that nobody else has thought of yet."
Similarly, Web 2.0 as a conference has jumped the shark. You can see it now in the blogs. "Oh look, crappr.com just launched; a social picture-sharing network for people who want to find toilets in big cities. Another one to add to the list..."
Lou, you identified the problem in mentioning developing-nation trade show booms in your last paragraph. For actual IT manufacturing at either the component or system level, the U.S. has become a backwater. All the action is in Asia and even parts of Latin America. The U.S. remains vibrant in content-development, but as Chris pointed out, startups in social networks and content sharing will have the shortest half-life of any technology sector in existence.
ReplyDeleteLou, as the guy that sees the numbers on the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, Boston and, most recently, Bangalore - I see a vibrant medium with growth across every metric.
ReplyDeleteNot sure that all events are suffering - some continue to grow...thank goodness
Interesting....How about the professional technical conferences, like the IEEE. Typically not big money makers, but they do seem to generate a community. Does anyone have any stats?
ReplyDeleteJohn,
ReplyDeleteIEEE has lots of conferences that range from thousands of attendees to a few dozen. Looking at attendance reports on the net, the smaller, focused events are maintaining attendance levels, but larger events, like DAC, seem less important. An IEEE member has to attend a certain number of events annually to maintain voting rights and DAC seems to be a filler event.
To Paul's comment, I think the success of ESC is that it does have a more specific focus on a growing technology, unlike CES, which is a huge amalgam and hard to pin down. But ESC also has a broader reach than Microprocessor Forum. The trick is to find that happy medium ... and an industry where engineers can still find jobs in the US. That also helps.
Trade shows and conferences are essential marketing activities. EG3's (www.eg3.com)'embedded marcom survey 2007' demonstrates this. According to the survey, trade shows remain a top communications activity, growing from 31% in 2006 to 35% of the total 2007 marcom budget. Trade shows remain an excellent venue to see a myriad of products and evaluate suppliers in a very short timespan. For savvy exhibitors, it's an effective way to build brand and/or generate new leads.
ReplyDeleteThe success or failure of shows is based on a myriad of factors. Some events - like CES - get too big and expensive to be worthwhile. It's easy to get the feeling that a trip to Fry's would've been more efficient than the trip to Las Vegas. Other industry shows feature the same speakers, the same companies, the same exhibitors, the same topics, etc. The show sponsors do not realize that technology convergence, new trends, and new players are exerting greater influence on the industry and need to be showcased.
In walking the show floor, I see that many companies have simply arrived unprepared for the sales creation part of the event. They focused on booth design, demos and displays -- even giveaways -- but they had no promotion, publicity, or sales outreach announcing their show presence. When the show fails to meet their expectations,the event is blamed rather than their lack of planning.
While traditional industry trade show formats work in other regions, the event-as-marketing-tool is mature here in the USA. Event sponsors need to create new formats to draw the sophisticated attendee that we have here.
One successful format is the company-hosted conference or seminar. These events allow sponsors and exhibitors to address a target audience and focus on sales generation versus revenue generation.
Small, focused events hosted by associations also have continued to be well attended and supported.
The common thread for any event, however, is that like any other communicaitons medium, content is still king. Without excellent content, a show cannot survive.