I spent a fun day at the CIPD annual exhibition last week, helping out the lovely people at Unlimited Potential, a coaching and training company I'm associated with.
One of the reasons the exhibition was so successful for Unlimited Potential was the consistency of the brand message - from the images and wording on the stand to the way we described what we do when we spoke to people, to the layout of the brochures.
We even wore the same purple t-shirts, which made a huge impact and wasn't nearly as embarrassing as it sounds.
The best stand of the whole event was a group who provide team-building exercises in the form of film production. A wonderfully simple idea that was carried through with a stand that was basically a lighting rig. They all wore the same t-shirts too. It was a great example of good branding delivering a simple message.
Another training organisation took the simple approach to an extreme. Their key message was 'we won't waste your money'. They had bought not one but three 'plots' around the exhibition hall and instead of dressing them in the time-honoured (and expensive) fashion, they left them completely empty except for a small pile of brochures. Occasionally someone would be attending the stands. Often they were deserted.
I've no doubt this seemed like a totally genius idea when they came up with it. The trouble was there was no way of knowing that this was supposed to be clever marketing. It just looked like they hadn't turned up.
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