MarketingProfs to Host Seminar on Improving Trade Show ROI

The seminar, hosted by MarketingProfs, aims to help event marketers make key strategic and tactical decisions that will lead to smarter allocation of budgets and improved performance to optimize bottom line results.

Event marketers will be taught an approach to measuring trade show exhibits that can be applied to all size exhibit programs. Specific measurement tools will be presented using case studies to illustrate how to measure objectives of all types, identify strengths and weaknesses of the exhibit for performance improvement and provide decision-support information.

Skip Cox, CEO of Exhibit Surveys, Inc. will be presenting the seminar on Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 12pm Eastern.

For more information on the cost of the seminar or to sign up, visit [MarketingProfs].

NRA Show Gives Restaurateurs Budget Friendly Menu Ideas

According to MarketWatch, consumers may not recognize their favorite restaurant’s menus as the eateries take creative steps to cope with rising commodity and energy prices without compromising the appetizing nature of their offerings. [YahooNews]

The buzz at the National Restaurant Association’s annual gathering of food makers, manufacturers and vendors, held this week in Chicago, was all about innovation and thriftiness. Vendors at booths and walking the miles of aisles at Chicago’s McCormick Place were anxious to show their customers — mostly fast-food, casual-dining and family-owned eateries, and food-service operators — how to cut costs without killing quality.

Show highlights:

• The restaurant show is a dieter’s nightmare. Food makers showcase — and offer generous samples — of everything from beef hot dogs, fried treats, and garlic pizza to piles of chocolate cakes and cookies, and pastries drenched in icing. Yes, there are plenty of stands with fresh fruit and vegetables, but even they’re paired with undoubtedly fattening sauces and dips.

• Private-labeland budding food and beverage sellers were abundant this year. Among the products being pushed: Lemon-X’s margarita mix and energy drinks or the House of Rocland’s Kilroy Was Here, a line of Australian red wines. A red pepper/cherry tomato-looking fruit — though it could’ve passed as a vegetable — called Peppadew Piquante Fruit claimed to be the first new fruit to be launched in the world market since the kiwi. It has a sweet but robust peppery flavor to it that will probably be an acquired taste.

• Ecology moves forward. Like every industry, restaurants are turning their sights to eco-friendly products and a myriad of safer cleaning agents, biodegradable to-go packaging and energy-saving equipment was hard not to stumble into this year.

• Safety is always top of mind and the show often hosts a least a couple of newfangled inventions. One product this year promised to help restaurants clean fryers without spilling hot oil on hapless employees — one of the fast-food industry’s biggest safety issues. Yet another declared it was “busting old equipment paradigms” in griddles.

Source: Market Watch

Photo: gundalowcatering.com

More Trouble Unfolds at Pulvermedia

Trade Show Week is reporting the San Jose VON show has been canceled and there is still no word on the status of the Boston show.

Additionally, VON Europe is not on the calendar on Amsterdam RAI’s Web site and calls to the venue for comment were not returned.

For the complete story…[TSW]

Orlando Aims to Rival Vegas in Convention Space

A possible $1 Billion expansion of the Orange County Convention Center could be ready as soon as the Summer of 2011. [wftv.com]

Developer Marc Watson has had architects working on plans for the north side of the convention center since 2005. Watson’s gaol is to build an entertainment megaplex that rivals Las Vegas. The plan calls for restaurants, an amphitheater, as well as four star hotels and shops along the water.”It will be the greatest urban convention meetings destination in the world,” said Watson.

Throw in some gambling and Orlando might be able to take over Vegas as the top spot for conventions and trade shows.

Source: WFTV

Picture: Orange County Convention Center

Exhibitors Cut Costs at Restaurant Show

The National Restaurant Association kicks off it’s annual show in Chicago tomorrow. Two large companies are trimming expenses and another is forgoing the show all together. [ChicagoTribune]

Perdue Farms Co. canceled an annual party for customers (its only presence at the show) saying it was an unnecessary expense “We need to cut costs where we can,” said Julie DeYoung, spokesperson for Perdue.

Tyson Foods Inc. won’t be serving chicken because of the cost involved. “We’ve decided against serving food this year because of the increasing cost,” Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson. Tyson will still have a major presence at the restaurant show, with its 3,600-square-foot booth.

McCain Foods Ltd., a giant french fry manufacturer, told show organizers in March that it was pulling out entirely, said Derrek Hull, the restaurant association’s manager of marketing and communications.

Show organizer said they were able to fill floor space vacated by McCain. The show, which runs Saturday through Tuesday, is one Chicago’s largest and is sold out for the third consecutive year.

But Greg Kirrish, the restaurant show’s vice president of sales and marketing, cautions “because of the challenging economic climate we do have to sell the benefits of the show to exhibitors and attendees.” Show organizers have a tougher job in times like these.

Organizers expect 74,000 people to attend the show, which will feature more than 2,000 exhibitors spread out over 610,000 square feet.

Source: Chicago Tribune

Photo: Walter Scheib

Signs of Trouble at Pulvermedia

TradeShow Executive and ComputerWorld are both reporting troubling news at Pulvermedia. According to ComputerWorld, “the founder of Pulvermedia — the producer of VON trade shows – has resigned.”[TradeShowExecutive] [Computerworld]

Apparently, both Jeff Pulver and Carl Ford left farewell messages on the company’s blog last week, but neither provided details on their departure.

Trade Show Executive reports Pulvermedia has laid off some employees and is restructuring, and quotes the firm’s event’s group CEO as saying the company is in a silent period so he can make no statements about the reorganization.

The trade show publication also said that TICC Capital Corp., a backer of Pulvermedia, said in a March 13 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it had lost $10.6 million on its investment in Pulvermedia. Rumors are swirling that Pulvermedia’s financial backers are stepping in to take over the company’s resources.

There is no firm information about the future of the company or the shows, which were among the earliest venues for Internet voice and video.

Source: TradeShow Executive, ComputerWorld

Boston Gains New Life Sciences Trade Show

BIOMEDevice, a new life sciences industry trade show focused largely on the medical device industry, is coming to Boston in 2009. [BizJournals]

Canon Communications LLC, the Los Angeles-based trade show company that is producing the two-day show, will work closely with the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council, or MassMedic to ensure the event’s success.

“We are very excited about it,” said Kevin O’Keefe, Canon’s senior vice president. “Outside of California, (Massachusetts houses) the biggest concentration of medical device manufacturers in the United States.”

BOIMEDevice will be held April 22-23, 2009, at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

Source: Biz Journals

Photo: BCEC

Three Textile Shows to Unite in 2010

The ATME-1/Megatex, Techtextil North America and SPESA Expo — will co-locate and align with one another at the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC) in Atlanta for Textile & Sewn Products Industry Week 2010, scheduled to take place May 18-20, 2010. [TextileWorld]

ATMA Chairman Jay White Jr., of Morrison Textile Machinery Co believes the co-location is positive for the attendees. “We expect excellent customer attendance from the entire textile processing and applications chain. This will be a very significant event for our industry with numerous networking opportunities, educational seminars and business and technical workshops alongside the trade shows themselves. Anyone who is in the textile business in the Americas should recognize that this is a ‘must-attend’ event,” says White.

This marks a continuing trend of multiple shows within an industry merging into one large show, allowing attendees to maximize their time and have access to educational seminars, networking and other special activities in one stop.

Source: Textile World

Orlando Secures PRI Show Through 2016

Officials with the Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Performance Racing Industry (PRI) Trade Show have agreed to extend their contract six years beyond the original 2010 expiration. [bizjournals]

“Orlando provides the PRI Trade Show with all the attributes of a great host city, including a spectacular convention center, and this has been proven by the enormous volume of business transactions concluded every year at the show,” say Steve Lewis, PRI show producer.

“Orlando’s dynamic growth in accommodations, amenities and attractions combined with our unparalleled service will ensure a uniquely compelling and successful show for PRI and its trade show attendees for many, many years to come,” says Gary Sain, president and CEO of the Orlando/Orange County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The annual event, featuring previews of the latest racing product lines, garners about 45,000 attendees.The 2008 PRI Trade Show is scheduled for Dec. 11 through 13.

Source: bizjournals.com

Photo: PRI

Wynn Resorts Planning New Convention Center

Wynn Resorts reports the addition of a convention center to the Las Vegas property is in the preliminary planning stages. Renderings for the new convention space featuring two new hotels and nearly 2 million square feet of exhibit space were started a couple of months ago.

According to Steve Wynn, chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts, the new facility will be built on the site where the golf course is now located, and that it would extend “2,000 feet to Paradise Road, from an area approximately 550 feet east of our villas, so that there will be a large lake with fountains like Bellagio that will entertain both hotels and the convention and meeting space.”

Wynn hopes to leverage the property’s ideal location between the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) and Sands Expo. He believes the new facility will help alleviate some of the issues the convention industry in Las Vegas currently faces including long taxi lines and daily traffic jams in and out of the LVCC. [TSW]

Source: TradeShow Week