Anyone who’s exhibited at a trade show will know that before the curtain falls and the visitors stream in a huge amount of hard work and thought goes into the planning. To say it feels like organising a military exercise may sound a bit dramatic, but having some army training would definitely have been an advantage!
We exhibited at London Packaging Week this year which took place in September at the Excel Arena in London’s docklands. It’s the premier event for UK suppliers and converters and is an opportunity for brands, specifiers and creatives to see what’s new in the world of luxury packaging and labels.
We started the process of ‘thinking’ about the show at the start of the year. We produce luxury coated papers, but we also supply labels, barrier coating, embossing, lamination, slitting and re-winding. What story do we want to tell, and how can we best showcase our business in an inviting and informative way? And so began the challenge …
We’re a medium sized business with a medium sized marketing budget. The show attracts businesses of all sizes, and many of the stands are far larger than our 4mx3m…So how do we make our stand stand out?
We settled on a simple formula….we’re paper converters, if you step onto the stand we want you to be in no doubt that that’s what we are.
Importantly we didn’t want visitors to feel intimidated, to be able to walk in and see what we do, and also to take away samples of our products.
We achieved this by displaying paper sheets in ladder racks which sat front and centre of the stand, and also A5 board samples which visitors could take away, like a pick & mix. The bright colours of the Pearlescent, Metallic & Neon colours made a bright and attractive backdrop which hopefully made people want to learn more.
Reaching out to designers and creatives was a key focus for the show as we want to engage and work with these teams to build our brand. It was really pleasing to see so many creatives on the stand. We produce the paper but these guys and girls do the really clever stuff!
The show was a great success…visitor numbers were up 50% on last year, and our stand was busy across both days, which was fantastic, if a bit hard on the legs. I mentioned at the beginning about all the planning…which isn’t the interesting bit but was none the less essential for everything to run smoothly.
The day before the show we arrived at 12.30 to set up….this won’t take long or so we thought!
The organisers were great, and the teams of electricians and fitters were brilliant…but 12.30pm soon became 7.30pm, as we had to wait for deliveries of materials, electricity cables to be hidden and carpets to be laid. My colleague Chris and I trudged off into the rainy London night to find a pub and chicken in a basket. We found the pub but the kitchen was closed…. Maybe it wasn’t too far off a military exercise!!
We’ll definitely be back next year though!
