Are trade shows the zombies of marketing?
By Francis Moran
Following so soon after a recent post that declared, “Your customers aren’t werewolves; stop looking for a marketing silver bullet,” today’s title might suggest that I am stranded in a double feature at the marketing equivalent of a b-movie drive-in. Not exactly, but I was at a trade show last week that had me wondering whether trade shows aren’t marketing’s undead, soulless ghouls that suck the life out of budgets and contaminate sales funnels with lousy leads.
It was the third trade show I attended on behalf of various clients this year. The first one, in January, was that orgy of geeks and gadgets called the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was followed closely by the National Retail Federation’s very serious Big Show in New York. These two shows may well be chalk and cheese compared one to the other, but if either is a zombie, someone forgot to tell them how to behave. Both were packed with industry experts, thousands of exhibitors, huge international delegations and masses of clearly alive and lively attendees. No George A. Romero production here.
