So, I’m getting ready to head up to Orlando for CTIA Wireless 2007, where I’ll be with Nokia (one of our firm’s clients) most of Tuesday and Wednesday, and am prompted to weigh in on the media relations usefulness of conferences and trade shows .. or, what can sometimes be the lack thereof.
A post with some pointers will follow later today, but let me first say it kills me whenever I get the pre-registered media list from CTIA or virtually any other conference – I know from my conference involvement days with IIR and Latin Venture that “media registration” is the catch-all category where everyone is thrown who is not either a sponsor, exhibitor, speaker or paid attendee, aka delegate.
I can tell you that’s a mistake on the part conference companies — as a former journalist I know how much it rankles the media to see twice as many press credentials as there are actual journalists in the hall or press room; and my conference experience was that unless the numbers of media on the pre-reg list correspond to actual booth visits from real journalists, your exhibitors and sponors feel like they really didn’t get their money’s worth.
For CTIA, the media “Registration Types” listed on CTIA site include: Print & Newswire Reporters, Freelance Journalists and Photographers, Online Reporters, Broadcast Journalists & Photographers, and Industry and Financial Analysts. I understand the analysts part – the sponsors and exhibitors like to woo them and they’re almost industry journalists, by virtue of the reports and newsletters they write. But, this time, it’s really out of hand with CTIA – the pre-reg media list as of March 20 included nearly 600 names, but a fraction of whom seemed to be professional newsgathering reporters, editors, broadcasters or bloggers.
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