The common phrase, "united we stand, divided we fall" has long been used by nations and leaders to inspire people in presence of clear and imminent danger. However, when it comes to laying out the floor plan for your trade show booth design in a limited space (for example, 20' x 30' as shown above), distinctly dividing the floor space in to two unique areas, 'Love' and 'Work' might be a good idea to propel your brand into action.
I was reading a great post the other day that spawned the idea for this article. The HBR blog post suggest that the age of snarkiness is behind us and now we are in the era of sweet love. The post successfully points out as to what is wrong with the Sonic commercial and dubs it as ineffective since it hinges on sarcasm not sweetness.
Sweetness is back. Sweetness is big. Sweetness, against all odds, and quite against character, is having a celebrity moment.
NOW, ADD A DOSE OF SOUR, YOUR BRAND BECOMES THE 'SWEET AND SOUR' SAUCE OF EMOTIVE ENGAGEMENT
I was reading a great post the other day that spawned the idea for this article. The HBR blog post suggest that the age of snarkiness is behind us and now we are in the era of sweet love. The post successfully points out as to what is wrong with the Sonic commercial and dubs it as ineffective since it hinges on sarcasm not sweetness.
Sweetness is back. Sweetness is big. Sweetness, against all odds, and quite against character, is having a celebrity moment.
NOW, ADD A DOSE OF SOUR, YOUR BRAND BECOMES THE 'SWEET AND SOUR' SAUCE OF EMOTIVE ENGAGEMENT
Brands gain huge currency when leading with sweetness.
This trend in exhibiting sweet love is evident in the amount of space that are devoted to lounges and the so called hang out areas. Grant McCracken, writer and anthropologist, in his book Culturematic, talks about brand that makes headway are the brands that fosters co-creation. He says we want brands that are works in progress, engagements in and of the world. Brands need to be about becoming, not about being.
The carefully designed 'hang out areas' in your space can be a Culturematic cluster– a bundle of experiences, "investigating the world in a variety of ways, defined with enough intellectual generosity with several outcomes—some of them quite different are possible".
And if you are exhibiting at trade shows with horizontal target audience 'Cuturematic' might just be the way to go. After all,"culturematic is a little experiment that in a playful counter-intuitive way, broaches a kind of what if." It is a great way to keep the engagement going both at the show floor and after the show.
If one half of your island booth design is an ideal setting for Culturematic cluster devote the other half for customized demonstration. Demos at trade shows are essentially futile unless it is designed to solve specific problems that customers encounter.
This trend in exhibiting sweet love is evident in the amount of space that are devoted to lounges and the so called hang out areas. Grant McCracken, writer and anthropologist, in his book Culturematic, talks about brand that makes headway are the brands that fosters co-creation. He says we want brands that are works in progress, engagements in and of the world. Brands need to be about becoming, not about being.
The carefully designed 'hang out areas' in your space can be a Culturematic cluster– a bundle of experiences, "investigating the world in a variety of ways, defined with enough intellectual generosity with several outcomes—some of them quite different are possible".
And if you are exhibiting at trade shows with horizontal target audience 'Cuturematic' might just be the way to go. After all,"culturematic is a little experiment that in a playful counter-intuitive way, broaches a kind of what if." It is a great way to keep the engagement going both at the show floor and after the show.
If one half of your island booth design is an ideal setting for Culturematic cluster devote the other half for customized demonstration. Demos at trade shows are essentially futile unless it is designed to solve specific problems that customers encounter.
To help better cater to your clients and prospects, do your research and find out what are the attendees trying to accomplish by coming to a specific event. What are their pain points. Heck, send out tweets asking them about it. Find out what solutions are being adopted in other industries or other countries to solve similar problems. Armed with answers you then design few presentations that talks about solving targeted problems. Here are some more booth design ideas.
THE MAKINGS OF EMOTIVE ENGAGEMENT
Clarity of Vision and Purpose
Driven by clarity and purpose at all times, your brand should be motivating your industry, your customers and competition. Your vision as a brand leader will help your figure out why you do, what you do, and why you do.
The why gives a reason for your brand to exist beyond trade and commerce
The vision is the journey towards manifesting a stand-out statement. It should welcome anyone and everyone with a verve for life catering to some aspects of one's rebellious spirit.
Cause to Lead by Example
Lead by example is hard and terrifying.
At its' worst it is the tyranny of boredom. At its' best it is transformational.
Imagine🤔, if Apple got stuck in the mobile wave of building razor thin Iphones!
Lead by example means when everyone is frigid with fear, you be flexible and keep moving. You show them how to act and adapt.
When everyone else is thinking of surviving, your are riding the wave of self- disruption.
"When everyone else is out of gas, you inject more fuel."
When everyone else doesn't know what to do next, you lead by example.
Create Inspired Spaces that vibrates with vim and vigor.
Choose a higher cause for your event. It can be somewhere between art and advertisement. After all, positive emotion gets triggered in the thrill of a creative effort.
The space should be a journey in compassion, and or, dialectics.
Compassion creates lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race. It creates landscapes not yet plundered, planets not yet explored, and terrains not traversed — vim of infinite possibilities.
Dialectics or Persuasion —
Much has been written and debated about persuasion.
One team of cognitive researchers recently coined the term persuasion fatigue for those moments. The fatigue, they say, is the frustration you feel when you fail to convince someone else of your ideas (say, that you really should get that covid booster).
“The whole experience may feel like trying to guide someone on a journey when they refuse to follow,” the researchers write for Scientific American. “They drag their heels, wander off in the wrong direction, and throw away the map you made for them.”
As Seth Godin rightly puts it, It is much easier to persuade people when they are aware of facts.
Choose a higher cause for your event. It can be somewhere between art and advertisement. After all, positive emotion gets triggered in the thrill of a creative effort.
The space should be a journey in compassion, and or, dialectics.
Compassion creates lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race. It creates landscapes not yet plundered, planets not yet explored, and terrains not traversed — vim of infinite possibilities.
Dialectics or Persuasion —
Much has been written and debated about persuasion.
One team of cognitive researchers recently coined the term persuasion fatigue for those moments. The fatigue, they say, is the frustration you feel when you fail to convince someone else of your ideas (say, that you really should get that covid booster).
“The whole experience may feel like trying to guide someone on a journey when they refuse to follow,” the researchers write for Scientific American. “They drag their heels, wander off in the wrong direction, and throw away the map you made for them.”
As Seth Godin rightly puts it, It is much easier to persuade people when they are aware of facts.
On the other hand:
“[Research shows] that dissent, debate and competing views have positive value, stimulating divergent and creative thought.” ... “Perhaps more importantly, we suggest that the permission to criticize and debate may encourage an atmosphere conducive to idea generation.”
Welcoming constructive argument, they add, can lead us to come up with ideas together. So we don’t just benefit from debate as our own means of thinking: we can take it to our teams for collective wins, too.
Dr. Mitchell Green, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut. He teaches a course called Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-Knowledge, based on his book of the same name. He says
Self-reflection, he says, doesn’t necessarily have to happen inside ourselves.
Instead, if you’re looking to understand your thinking, he suggests, try taking a cue from the ancient Greeks. Instead of looking inwards, we should turn out.
“When Socrates and Plato talked about self-knowledge, they didn’t mean anything like introspection,” says Green. Rather, they used what’s known as dialectic: back-and-forth arguments between debaters ready to challenge each others’ ideas.
“[Research shows] that dissent, debate and competing views have positive value, stimulating divergent and creative thought.” ... “Perhaps more importantly, we suggest that the permission to criticize and debate may encourage an atmosphere conducive to idea generation.”
Welcoming constructive argument, they add, can lead us to come up with ideas together. So we don’t just benefit from debate as our own means of thinking: we can take it to our teams for collective wins, too.
Dr. Mitchell Green, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut. He teaches a course called Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-Knowledge, based on his book of the same name. He says
Self-reflection, he says, doesn’t necessarily have to happen inside ourselves.
Instead, if you’re looking to understand your thinking, he suggests, try taking a cue from the ancient Greeks. Instead of looking inwards, we should turn out.
“When Socrates and Plato talked about self-knowledge, they didn’t mean anything like introspection,” says Green. Rather, they used what’s known as dialectic: back-and-forth arguments between debaters ready to challenge each others’ ideas.
Consider it an invocation in the opposite of introspection. If you want to get to know your ideas, the ancient Greeks might say, you should try to convince someone else of them.
In studying how groups could best come up with creative ideas, a landmark study found that debate was the best tool.
Being divided into three teams, participants were asked to come up with ideas for the same challenge: reducing congestion in the Bay Area.
The teams, however, were given different sets of conditions. One team was given little rules beyond the initial challenge. The other was given instructions to brainstorm. And the last were given instructions to debate and critique.
The result? Teams that debated their ideas produced, on average, 25% more ideas than the others.
Knowing this what you know now, would you design your booth space for persuasion or dialectics? How about experimenting with both.
In studying how groups could best come up with creative ideas, a landmark study found that debate was the best tool.
Being divided into three teams, participants were asked to come up with ideas for the same challenge: reducing congestion in the Bay Area.
The teams, however, were given different sets of conditions. One team was given little rules beyond the initial challenge. The other was given instructions to brainstorm. And the last were given instructions to debate and critique.
The result? Teams that debated their ideas produced, on average, 25% more ideas than the others.
Knowing this what you know now, would you design your booth space for persuasion or dialectics? How about experimenting with both.
Closing Thoughts:
Trade shows and are fertile grounds to ignite new brand culture.
Wouldn't it be great if you knew the kind of content that is being shared by the attendees of these events. You can then gauge the commonly held beliefs and behaviors of your clients and prospects. Very soon you will find out if there is a contradiction of some sort. Once you detect it, your brand will gain transformational traction on a evolutionary scale.
Of course, you will highlight your brand preference to build recognition. But what is really enticing is tapping into the collective anxiety and achieving a status that transcends functional benefit.
One great example that comes to mind is Google. In the age of digital clutter, Google offers empowerment “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Question to ponder: How do I humanize (for emotive engagement) my next trade show exhibit in order to trigger collective consciousness?
Trade shows and are fertile grounds to ignite new brand culture.
Wouldn't it be great if you knew the kind of content that is being shared by the attendees of these events. You can then gauge the commonly held beliefs and behaviors of your clients and prospects. Very soon you will find out if there is a contradiction of some sort. Once you detect it, your brand will gain transformational traction on a evolutionary scale.
Of course, you will highlight your brand preference to build recognition. But what is really enticing is tapping into the collective anxiety and achieving a status that transcends functional benefit.
One great example that comes to mind is Google. In the age of digital clutter, Google offers empowerment “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Question to ponder: How do I humanize (for emotive engagement) my next trade show exhibit in order to trigger collective consciousness?