GigaOm’s Katie Fehrenbacher had a great post this morning on “Top 5 Trends to Expect at CTIA,” where I’m looking forward, among other things, to visiting with some of the exhibitors at the show’s Ireland Pavilion, hosted again this year by Enterprise Ireland.
For those who do media relations work for clients at trade shows like CTIA, there’s a handy five-point post from Alan Weinkrantz called The Realities of Making Appointments at Trade Shows that I recently spotted, courtesy of another five-point post (what’s with this five-point, stuff?) from The Bad Pitch Blog in January. Alan makes some great points, especially about the advisability of lining up media interviews well in advance.
Also noteworthy is the comment to Alan’s post from Brian at Public Relations Chat about advising clients to skip the shows altogether if they have nothing worthwhile to announce, demo or showcase — while I might not agree with ’skip altogether,’ it certainly is a good idea to properly manage the client’s expectations with regard to what media coverage they might realistically expect, sans a major announcement or some equally compelling news.
Take John Biggs’ post-CES post at CrunchGear, Who Killed CES?. John makes the point that what dampered the mammoth CES show dazzle this year was its overreach in terms of size and scope, but his his post also brilliantly underscores the problem of anyone short of an Apple or a Microsoft trying to cut through the noise and buzz at some of the larger trade shows.
Without serious news or an ongoing story to communicate to media you’ve previously lined up for briefings an interviews, best advice to most clients is to send a couple of executive delegates, by all means; maybe kick-in for an affordable booth for visibility with partners and customers or dish out for a lanyard or tote bag sponsorship, at least; but, without a real message or announcement to convey, they’re likely to get much more return on their media outreach investment in other ways and through other channels.
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