B-to-B Events

In our Then and Now series, EM revisits old event marketing trends to find out where they’ve gone since we first reported on them. Are they old hats and has-beens? Or is that past up-and-comer a future best practice that’s now an industry standard? In this eco-installment, we re-examine green-friendly trade show booth materials, which we began covering in our earliest issues.

Photo marketing is a valuable tool for a variety of reasons. It’s an incentive to get consumers to interact with your brand, it captures data, it serves as a long-lasting memento and generally drives eyeballs to your website during the photo retrieval process. But what’s next on the horizon for photo marketing? Once that photo lands in the inbox or on the Facebook page, how can event marketers get the photo activation past the point of distribution? EM checked in with the experts to find out how they’re using photo marketing to inspire consumers to take action.

You might say it takes a village to pull off an event as big as the reveal of the newest Boeing airplane, the 747-8 Intercontinental, which also happens to be the largest commercial aircraft built in the U.S. and the longest passenger aircraft in the world. At least that’s how David Okrent, brand manager for the new plane, puts it.

The April 18 press reveal in New York City for the 2012 Beetle captured the essence of the newly redesigned car via dramatic video projections that brought to life the vehicle’s Super Bowl ad and created an immersive experience for the 260 industry writers and lifestyle media in attendance.

When Comdex resurrected itself as a virtual show last November after the live event was dormant for eight years, longtime sponsor and exhibitor Microsoft got back on board, but this time with a soft sell strategy that was less about plugging the company’s products and more about helping Comdex attendees find solutions to their biggest IT challenges.