By inmedia
As PR practitioners, we here at inmedia have spent enough time in trade show purgatory to expunge a lifetime of sins. Still the circuit remains a critical element of the marketing mix for many technology companies and we expect we’ll hang many a lanyard around our necks before our time is done.
What we hope to never encounter is the kind of trade show disasters recounted in today’s Network World. Some of the stories here are older ones, but others are quite fresh. I have to say the one I enjoyed the most was the tale of the hapless Dateline NBC producer who tried to go undercover, complete with concealed pinhole camera, at Defcon earlier this year. This security-focused show, which attracts hackers by the hundreds, has got to be ground zero for the paranoid. Needless to say, it wasn’t long before she was identified and ignominously escorted off the premises.
Murphy, who said, “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong,” clearly went to a few trade shows in his day.
By Danny Sullivan
I’ve recently been working with a client on the development of article discussing the economic downturn and how companies can profit by investing in customer-facing activities during this period, rather than the usual approach of cutting back in these areas.
The article isn’t going to appear for a while, but I wanted to raise the topic now, as it’s one that affects PR and marketing people directly.
Many of us who worked in this business during the years when the tech bubble burst will have stories to tell about the hacking and slashing of marketing budgets that were, in many cases, first in the line of fire. Unfortunately, marketing is often viewed as an area of business that doesn’t have enough impact on the bottom line to prevent the hatchet falling heavily on it.
But in the article I’ve been working on, my client references data showing that companies that chose to increase their investment in marketing during previous downturns actually vastly outperformed those companies that cut or maintained marketing budgets, once the economy started to recover.
It’s an interesting topic, and I’m sure it’ll be of even more interest as marketing and PR departments start making the case for their budgets in the face of the downturn.
Of course, I’ll refer back to the article when it’s published so you can all check it out for yourselves (some time in May).
