The CMA Music Fest is the place to be for everything country music. CMT wanted to make a great showing, and asked Advent to help them display their brand with a custom exhibit that included a stage, a red carpet, and one big set of vehicle graphics.

Solutions

Advent helped CMT by designing a custom exhibit with opportunities for large format graphics that promoted the CMT Music Awards. The cubed design allowed CMT to present the images of many artists. The center of the custom exhibit housed a “photo op” stage complete with a CMT branded backdrop. Custom vinyl flooring gave the booth just the finishing touch it needed.

New Mississippi State Head Football Coach Dan Mullen wanted to create energy and excitement about his football program. To do this, MSU needed to update the football offices and locker room to reflect the heritage of the MSU program, as well as Coach Mullen’s vision for his new team. The offices needed to speak to recruits and their families about the value of being a part of the MSU football tradition. The program also needed the updates to comply with their new athletic logo standards.

Solutions

Advent helped Mississippi State by stamping their football facilities with Coach Mullen’s vision, helping to tell the story of what MSU football means to its players, coaches, students, and fans. By implementing inspiring messaging and telling unique stories (like the famous “Dawg Walk”), Advent was able to convey the MSU tradition and vision throughout the premise.

(Premlimary pictures…)

FOOTBALL OFFICES

MISSISSIPPI STATE FOOTBALL LOCKER ROOM

Here’s a sneak peak of some of the brand space transformations. We’ll have a full case study up soon.

*UPDATE: Case Study found here.

JA Integrated Thinking is a Nashville-based advertising agency that asked Advent to help them with their new space. The case study can be found here.

We’ve also uploaded the Lipscomb University Dining Hall. Lipscomb wanted their dining hall to reflect the institutions’ commitment to their students. Check it out here.

JA Integrated Thinking works with some of the biggest brands in the world in fast food, banking, sports and entertainment industries. JA asked Advent to develop a space that reflects their commitment to their clients and their commitment to creativity.

Solutions:

Advent helped JA fabricate their brand space by using different elements and textures, helping JA tangibly express who they are and what they do at every turn. Words to describe the JA brand appear immediately as you step off the elevator. To the left of the lobby, JA’s clients are highlighted with clear stand off panels as the drop shadow of the logo falls on the wall for a dimensional effect.

Lipscomb asked Advent to create a better dining experience for students, faculty, and visitors to the university. They also wanted to use the dining hall as a place for key messaging, and a showcase of what their campus is all about.

Solutions:

Advent delivered Lipscomb a dining hall makeover that truly expressed the Lipscomb brand. The Spirit of Lipscomb banners showcase the major commitments Lipscomb has made to its students and staff. A wall of memories serve as conversation starters as they express campus traditions and great moments. Advent also helped with wayfinding to create a more controlled and informative serving environment.

They owned an exhibit and all they knew how to do was take their big, heavy exhibit to the tradeshow. The cost of ownership was weighing them down. Every time they wanted to use the exhibit, they had to pay the cost of pulling it from their exhibit house’s inventory, then prepping it, repacking it, loading it up, and shipping it to the show site where one more cost was incurred called drayage, or material handling.

That whole budget for using the exhibit for one show, complete from their storage at their exhibit house all the way through installation and dismantle, was $60,000.

Advent performed an audit of that strategy and explained to the publishing company that they could save them money and still present the same brand presentation.

Advent was able to cut that budget almost in half and do a similar exhibit using our rental inventory in the same show city where the exhibitor had a show for $32,000. That’s a savings of $28,000. That money went right to the bottom line.

Check out the pictures below. (The brand name on the booth has been blurred out.)

For a typical buyer from a mid-sized firm who is attending a tradeshow, the pens, notebooks, and mouse-pads given out at the event often distract from his main focus: to find quality suppliers. What matters to him isn’t the best gift he receives (pens get jammed in a cup on the desk and mouse-pads thrown in a supply closet) but the time he has to interact face to face with potential suppliers, which makes all the difference.

According to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR), face-to-face interaction has significant value when attempting to guarantee ROI from a tradeshow. In a recent study published in November, the CEIR shows that 76% of attendees rate face-to-face interaction with potential vendors and suppliers as very or extremely important in performing their job. Buyers want to see that the staff sent to man the booth is educated and knowledgeable about the product. Buyers want to know if you can tell them some exceptional uses for a product, or some common ones they come across yet. How much do you know, and how do you convey that to the buyer.

Another huge factor in convincing buyers of your company’s worth is how you integrate  all of the elements of your tradeshow “performance”.  How are you integrating advertising, sponsorships, and hospitality functions into the exhibition marketing mix? How do those fit with your pre-show promotion, at-show hospitality, and staff training? Is your staff friendly? Do buyers stop at your booth because you bought them coffee this morning? What are you doing to stand out and how are you showing that every move you make is part of a concerted effort to prove your worth to the buyer? All good questions to ask yourself when you are putting together your tradeshow presence.

Consistently, the Sundance Film Festival plays host to some of the most innovative event marketing campaigns on the planet. This year was no exception.

The festival attracts more than 46,000 visitors every year and reaches more than 400 million people worldwide. The Sundance Institute, which runs the festival, allows sponsors to occupy designated suites and either interact with guests or showcase products. This year, no less than 10 “Official Venues” maintained a presence at the festival. Below, are three that stood out among the rest:

This year, Ray Ban stepped up its sponsorship activities by not only sponsoring the Visionary Award event (which went to Ewan McGregor) but also engaging consumers on the street. Street teams engaged festival-goers and Park City locals with postcard invitations encouraging them to visit one of three branded “Confession Booths” where they could play Truth or Dare. At the booths, consumers could jump inside, put on a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses and answer Truth or Dare-style questions in a 15- to 30-second video that would be uploaded to ray-ban.com. Booth visitors received a photo strip with six photos and a code directing them to the site to check out the video. Further, ten Ray Ban branded taxis patrolled the streets equipped with cameras and offered free rides, plus another shot at entering the contest to anyone willing to play truth or dare on camera.

Microsoft filled a house with cutting edge digital video equipment and opened the venue to the public. Each day, The Microsoft House allowed visitors to see how HDi is transforming the way we watch and make movies. See for yourself the full capability of high definition video and audio, and the advanced viewing features and interactive capabilities of HDi.

Fred Segal stood out from all the other storefronts offering free gifts to the celebrities by providing their most sought after items (including Kerastase hair care products) in abundance. Everyone from Tara Reid to Tom Anderson of Myspace stopped by the store’s location on Main Street to pick up the gifts and the initiative was hailed as the best in recent memory.

Lipscomb University asked Advent to create an engaging brand space for the College of Pharmacy in their newly renovated Burton Building. With the pharmacy school celebrating its first class, they wanted to develop a space that communicated the vision of the school.

Solution:

Advent designed an interactive welcome wall in the lobby of the front entrance. The walls shows video of the school’s development, and calls out each student by name. Semi-private conference rooms were accomplished without sacrificing the theme. Also, Advent created a unique wayfinding plan for the buidling. By each professor’s door, there is a nameplate complete with that professor’s DNA makeup.

Pop up shops are about surprising consumers with temporary ‘performances.’ In effect, retailers guarantee exclusivity of products because of the limited timespan in which they are available. Retailers from Brazilian cosmetics firm Oceanic to low end chic retailer Target have opened such shops across the world targeting their own specific markets.

Oceanic didn’t have the funds to build a brick and mortar storefront but wanted to have a real world presence for it’s business. As such, they decided to go mobile, equipping most of their franchisees with Fiat Doblo minivans, which are both delivery vehicles AND shops. These mobile stores make it easy to target prime consumer locations such as universities, schools, hospitals, parks, and trade shows. Not to mention customization: the mobile store’s inventory can be customized for different locations (i.e. if a frachisee parks near a beach, he or she’d better stock up on sunscreen and suntan lotions!).

Target, on the other hand, wanted to promote the launch of Isaac Mizrahi’s new womens clothing line with the franchise. To do so they opened up a temporary 1500 sq. feet store in Rockefeller Center to celebrate Mizrahi’s stylish new looks. The glossy store was open from 4 September to 15 October 2003 only. Further, last year, Target actually housed a temporary floating store on the Hudson River for the Christmas season.

At a national trade show, the attendance typically reaches into the tens of thousands, as such, you can expect to have up to 200 visitors a day (far more than you could ever hope to reach via sales calls).

One of the biggest drawbacks of the medium is that you don’t always have the opportunity to go into as much detail in your presentation as you would like. However, trade shows do open the door for future communications — a door that sometimes is very difficult to get your foot into.

For most companies trade shows are worth the small credit to the marketing budget. So, before pulling out the checkbook for a traditional print advertising campaign, think what you might be able to derive from showcasing at a trade show- with the help of event marketing specialists-  and the one on one interactions provided.

Experiential marketing plays into this in a number of ways with the three core tenants of the concept: branded spaces, events and custom exhibit design. Each one of these things give you the ability to connect with your customer on a more personal level. With all three you’ve got the ability to bridge the gap between you and your consumer in a unique way that will really showcase what makes your company special. Showing off who you are as a company in the most effective way possible will go a long way to helping your customers understand who you are. Show off that more personal, casual part of your company and take your customers along for the ride. Any of the options in experiential marketing or even a combination of them can help you start connecting with your customers in a whole new way.

Advent designed various treatments and methods to implement the D1 brand into their Little Rock location. Stand-off graphics, vinyl application, and ImageWalls custom wallpaper were used to help D1 truly communicate their brand message.

The video below is a showcase of the D1 Little Rock location.

Enjoy.

The coincident announcement that Steve Jobs, Apple’s iconic CEO, would not be giving the keynote address for health reasons ignited even more angst and rumor-mongering, bordering on the “Paul is dead” Beatle conspiracy hysteria from an earlier generation.

“What does Apple’s pull-back mean???! Does this mean Apple doesn’t believe in trade shows? Will I ever get to see Steve again?”

The pundits and fanboys should take a deep breath…

The critical piece of information missing in all this blubbering is the hint that Apple may have a significant presence at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). CES usually happens about a week after MacWorld. CES is where Microsoft, Sony, Dell, Nintendo, and a host of others make their big announcements each year.

Apple has usually ignored CES, and instead focused its attention on being the big fish in the smaller pond of MacWorld. However, Apple’s announcements have increasingly overshadowed the news coming out of CES to the point where Apple may be ready to make the jump to the bigger pond. If Apple can use its marketing prowess to dominate the world’s attention in its competitions’ back yard, then it will suck up a lot of the available oxygen (press coverage) at the show. That’s a competitive move that seems to fit with Apple’s DNA.

Since Apple makes great use of secrecy, I guess we’ll have to wait and see. What do you think?

Within the gallery is a wide range of projects that we have worked on in the past, we’ve got the attitude of “if you dream it, we can build it”. We’ve worked with many companies helping them achieve their vision for their spaces or trade show booths from health care companies to faith based organizations to local universities. Every single business is unique, even those in the same industry, so why shouldn’t your space be just as unique as you are? If you’re looking to brand your office space, needing a trade show booth to stand out above the rest, or looking to wow your clients with your next event, we would love to talk to you. Let us help you take your experiential marketing to the next level!

The North American International Auto Show began in 1907 at Beller’s Beer Garden at Riverside Park. Since then, it has taken place every year except for a period from 1943-1952. The event picked up steam quickly, as the city was home to the three major American car companies and by 1922 the show had grown so large it had to move to an even larger building on the west side of the city.

The NAIAS continued to grow and in 1965 moved to it’s current location at Cobo Center in Downtown Detroit. Cobo Center features one of the largest single floor exhibition spaces in the world and is capable of hosting a 600,000 square-foot show in a single hall (As automakers added two and three level displays, that number ballooned to 1 million square feet). Since the move, the auto show has continued to grow in both size and stature. In 1989 Toyota and Nissan chose to introduce the Lexus and Infiniti luxury brands in Detroit, cementing the show as an international event.

Currently, the auto show is in it’s opening run: allowing the press to view the cars before opening the show to the general public. Notably, this is the first time Chinese automakers will display on the main floor with both BYD and Brilliance being granted space.

Since it’s inception, the North American International Auto Show has been a showcase not only for automobiles, but marketing agencies. As the show has evolved, the audience expectation has shifted from “show me” to “engage me.” Automakers are responding by creating interactive displays, including Scion’s new “Mix it Up,” Kiosk where visitors mix their own color and choose their own accessories and graphics to render their own unique Scion vehicle, background and audio track.

From his hallmark advertising offices in San Francisco’s Original Firehouse #1, he created a number of classic ads through which he single handedly developed the field of Experiential Marketing. In his first advertisements for Eagle Shirtmakers, he asked customers to send in to the company for their complementary Eagle Label, thus insuring that their store label shirt would be forever identified with it’s maker (Eagle, at the time, was a white label producer of store brand shirts). Thousands of readers sent in for the free label and the advertisement was an immediate success, making the steady brand a household name.

In his later work, Gossage would implore readers to write in for ‘Pink Air’ from Fina Gasoline stations (on the idea that since everything else at a Fina station had already been perfected with additives, making the air that goes in tires pink was the only additional improvement they could think of) and to send their paper airplane designs to the Scientific American headquarters.

Every time Howard Gossage ran an ad with a tiny coupon in the lower right corner, thousands of people would cut it out, put it in an envelope with a stamp and mail it in. This idea of involving the consumer in the message was one of Gossage’s primary contributions to our craft, and has been carried on to the present day in the form of experiential marketing.

• Videocassette Recorder (VCR), 1970
• Laserdisc Player, 1974
• Camcorder, 1981
• Compact Disc Player, 1981
• Compact Disc - Interactive, 1991
• Mini Disc, 1993
• Digital Satellite System, 1994
• Digital Versatile Disk (DVD), 1996
• High Definition Television (HDTV), 1998
• Hard-disc VCR (PVR), 1999
• Microsoft Xbox, 2001
• Plasma TV, 2001
• Home Media Server, 2002
• Blu-Ray DVD, 2003
• HDTV PVR, 2003

CES also has it’s own green initiative within the trade show regarding the following:

The International CES provides our industry an opportunity to convene at one time, in one place, at an eco-friendly blockbuster summit that minimizes your annual travel.

-By attending CES, our attendees avoid over 700 million miles of business travel – enough to travel from the earth to the sun seven times.
-Each of our attendees has an average of 12 meetings while at CES and approximately 1.7 million meetings are conducted in total.
-Representatives travel from over 140 different countries, offering a truly global opportunity.

We hope everyone enjoyed the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show!

From the Consumer Electronics Show that begins on January 8 through the entire year, trade shows are a constant among many businesses. Do you have your business all ready to go for whatever trade show you are attending? We can work with you on plenty of designs from small to beyond your wildest imagination to make sure your brand really  stick out at your next trade show. We love all facets of custom booth design, so if you are needing something for the year, we would love to help out.

If you are planning on throwing an event to feature your company, have you thought about exactly how you’d like to achieve the biggest wow factor you can? When throwing a special event for your company, it is important to remember that you want your brand to really shine through and to leave a lasting impression. If you have a new product you want to introduce in the coming months, or even if you want to get a huge jump start on your 2009 holiday party, consider letting Advent throw you a great branded event.