By: Ivana Validžić, retail strategist, Brigada
There is hardly a brand or a company that hasn’t at least once used a booth or a pavilion as a means of promotion. There are an increasing number of options, and a direct contact with customers or clients opens up the opportunity for a deeper connection with the brand. As with any other means of communication, the first step to success is to be recognizable and distinguishable from the others. Still, most brands have uniform stands, with a desk and possibly a different background graphics and a logo on the front.
Here are the six steps to follow to make a more successful promo booth:
1. Emphasize the main value of the brand
Every brand should be unique, so it is necessary to identify and isolate its main value that you will present. Thus you come to a creative concept as the basis for other steps.
2. Offer more than information
Decide what it is that you can offer to the visitors to your booth, and which you can’t offer through other promotional channels. Look for something tangible. Because it’s a pity to waste the space whose footprint you are paying, and not offer anything more than mere information, which your target audience can already get at your website or any other channel of communication.
3. Use the potential of the space
Pay attention to the potential of space as a means of communication. It provides an immediate experience, stronger than experience through mobile or a computer screen. Space can affect all five senses!
4. Define the process of communication
Find an innovative approach to visitors. And I don’t mean the design of the stand, but the definition of a process that will take place during the promotion and the mode of communication. Also, consider whether there is something more innovative than a leaflet that the client could take home as a reminder of the experience that they had at your stand.
5. Practical characteristics
Ask yourself the following questions: how important is for the booth to be modular and adaptable to different situations; what floor area does it need; how easy it is to set up; ease of transport; quality and service life? Don’t settle for concessions, because it is always possible to find a solution that respects all the necessary parameters.
6. Designing
Designing the stand with clear guidelines starts only after answering the previous questions.
When you can say that your booth possess the functionality for easy changes to graphics, the size that adjusts to a rented space, and differs from the competition in any form, then you have successfully engineered and designed a stand that is not only aesthetically pleasing. When you add to all this the added value through the influence of smell, touch, sound and taste with which you “pull” the visitors into the story of your brand, then you have fully utilized the capacity of the booth and then you have invested your money wisely.
Finally, let your booth or pavilion reflect the value of your brand, make it a must for visitors and engage them to interact, and let it showcase your product or service in an innovative way.
In the photographs are the stands for the Adris Group on the Weekend Media Festivals in Croatia, then the stand for Pliva, for Holcim in Slovakia, Bakcell and Borusan Makina in Azerbaijan, and for the Austrian company MM Packaging at the Luxepack Fair in Monaco.
