Snapdragon's garden

Spring Fair 2011 - The reason I think they should refund.

I promised this post a while ago - but I've been running about doing lots of other things, and to be honest its a bit depressing to return to the subject of EMap's Spring Fair at the NEC last month.

But a few of the other standholders contected me this week to check I was still going to blog . . . so here goes.

Last post I dealt with location - and I think that what Emap sales people did was bad, but in some ways no worse than any other sales team where sales are more important than long term relationships. If I ran a sales team bonuses would be linked to re booking, not sold space.

However, the real reason that I think Emap should refund the money to the disgruntled standholders in the Spotlight area is this

A terrible, terrible photo - I think by this stage I was shaking so much that everything was a blur - but you can see that the arrows on the banner are pointing left.  The spotlight area, listed 3rd from the top, was actually to the right.  Floor stickers were also positioned wrongly, sending visitors off in yet another direction.  Follow the signage in the hall and you would have gone round and round in circles, but, crucially, never arrived.

So, not content with hiding the Spotlight area at the back corner of the hall, signs actually directed people away from the area.

This isn't bad luck or poor judgement, it is ineptitude.  The Head of Events told me on the phone that she really didn't think that had the signage been accurate that it would have made any difference.  She also claimed that it depended on where you saw the banners from as to whether they pointed the right way (errr no!)

So there you go - if I had made a mistake like that I would be mortified, I would be refunding and then some, I would be trying to rebuild a relationship with the businesses who are going to be the future of the show. But then I do not work for Emap.

Spring Fair 2011 - Location, Location, Location

I have decided to write my account of what happened at Spring Fair in a series of blogs over the next few weeks - partly because it is distressing to do it all as a oner, but also that there were so many things that contributed to the problems that it would be easy to descend into ranting "and another thing" . . .

Therefore I shall be basing my posts on the points raised in a letter written jointly by 29 of the stands in the Spotlight area and delivered to the Event Director, Sarah Charlton, on the 10th February.  The Event Director has since told me that standholders were co-erced into signing the letter, but that certainly wasn't my experience.

So here goes.

1. Location.  I am paranoid about location at Trade shows, I spend ages talking to organisers before selecting stands. I am a right pain.  This is because it is the single most important thing that can make a difference to how a show goes.

It is very important to be on the buyers' route, especially at a big Fair where buyers may not deviate much from main traffic routes.

The marketing email for the Spotlight area read

"Within the Design Led section we have a feature called Spotlight, which is designed for new and smaller companies to the show. This section is positioned in and around bigger and more established companies, so you can feed off their customer base. I have included some further information below:

Positioned at the front of Hall 9, close to the entrance of Hall 8 which holds 'the Summerhouse' who are an edited high end collection of companies"

I am a cautious person so I followed this up with 4 phonecalls in September last year exploring this and was repeatedly re-assured that the Spotlight area was on a main route from the Entrance of Hall 9 to Hall 8.

It obviously wasn't enough.

Here is a photo of Kit pointing to where Spotlight actually was on the plan of halls.

Not at the front - not en-route to hall 8 unless you were lost, certainly not in the traffic flow.  Right at the back left hand part of the hall, en-route to absolutely nothing.

So was it mis-selling?  Was it cynical mis-information?  One of the Emap employees told me at the Fair that Spotlight was "technically at the front of the hall" - presumably a reference to the fact that it was next to the loading bay, so when you were unloading then it was at the front . . . .  In past years, doors just to the left of the number 12 on the plan had been open as a route from a neighbouring hall but they weren't in use this year.  I had charitably thought that perhaps the entrance changed between September and February and they forgot to let us know . . . but sadly not .

The result was that there was absolutely no general foot traffic in the area.

My view is that if you are creating a "Spotlight area" for new customers, ones which you recognise will need to "feed off the customer base" of more established brands, small businesses which you claim to be interested in helping develop - well then you actually do put them in a Spotlight, you put them at the front, or the centre.  You make sure that buyers go past them.

You don't tuck them away at the back.

 

 

Hiding your Spotlight under a bushel

This is a very bad phone photo of the Snapdragon stand at the Spring Fair at the NEC in Birmingham.

As you may know we did not have a great time at the Trade show.  It wasn't just a case of it being a disappointing Trade Show - they happen, you move on.  It was a catalogue of mistakes and misleading information - the Spotlight area for new businesses was not at the front of the hall as detailed in emails, it was at the back left hand corner, well away from visitor flow.  Banners and floor stickers directed buyers in the opposite direction and the catalogues were, shall we say, confusing.

Since getting back from the show I have been in discussions with the organisers Emap and I felt that I couldn't  really post about the experience while talking to them.  They offered 50% off the stand space for Spring Fair 2012 (worth about £450).  This is not an offer I can take up and no other is forthcoming. 

This morning I got a supposedly personal email from the Event Director which actually had another business's name in the body of the text - a lack of engagement which pretty much sums up the whole sorry experience.

So now that I've been told "take it or leave it" I feel that I can talk about the show, so next week I shall be posting about what went wrong, why I think it went wrong and so on.  For I feel that too often small businesses are exploited.

That - and the fact that, in many points, the organisation of the area was SO bad it was actually very funny.  Funny if you could forget the noise of money rolling down the drain.