It may be that your marketing organization is going strong for years and Your Trade Show Gang has remained stable or grown so that now you have some of the strongest expertise in the business.
Or, there may be changes. Perhaps the competitor offered you a deal too good to turn down, or the company has merged into another company with an entirely different trade show mindset or routine. Or maybe the entire industry changed, and what was once a brick and mortar industry has become an online industry. Or, perhaps your business has gone international, so the show that used to be in New York is now in London.
Whenever some change occurs that’s large or small, savvy marketers will first ask, “What does this look like that we’ve already dealt with?”
What at first looks like radical change is really just a matter of adapting to it, adopting an alternative and adjusting what you’re already doing to fit in with the new reality.
There’s an ancient Chinese proverb about a guy who kept monkeys. He fed them peanuts throughout the day, and found that they objected to 4 nuts in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. So he switched it to 3 nuts in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, and this change made them happy.
Marketers are doing this all the time, with products that are “new,”
“improved,” “revolutionary,” and all the rest. These products may be on an evolutionary curve such that they are being improved every so often by technology or design. But once you play with it, you find it looks a lot like the old product you know and love.
Don’t Worry About the Change
In fact, for marketing reasons, various people with an axe to grind will be happy to sell you a new trade show, a new product, or a new world. It’s the newer, hipper, cheaper, meaner, leaner version of the same old song.
So when you’re confronted with the new trade show, the change in assignment, or doing business from the floor of the show with a smartphone, remember as the song says, “The fundamental things apply as time goes by.”
In fact, the more of a backlog of experiences you have, the less impressed you’ll be by change, and the more perspective you’ll be able to bring to your organization.
This doesn’t mean that experience allows one to be a troglodyte or cave dweller. But, with your trade show experience, you’ll be better able to evaluate new technologies and ways of doing business, and you’ll be better prepared to put those changes to work for you.
