Are bloggers & social networks killing the big shows?

While certain trade shows will be crushed under their own weight, I think that the death of the trade show is greatly exaggerated. While the idea of inviting people to a party, might work if you’re Apple, it doesn’t work if you’re “SmallBiz Inc.”. Trade shows with good foot traffic still provide an enormous amount of exposure in a short amount of time and for smaller companies, this can be invaluable. With some of the trade shows my company has done in the last few years we’ve directly closed enough business to fund the shows for the next 20 years. Also, who are the “right people” to have in the room for these private invites? How do I pick the buyers out of the 44,000 people going to the show?

We’ll keep going to the trade shows that show direct returns (Interop, FOSE and others) and dump those that don’t, but to say the trade show is dead is well, just brain dead IMHO.

I don’t know– I see the killer of trade shows being the economy and its effect on budget items- does the trade show spend justify itself? Social networks are a valuable substitute and the beneficiary, but not the murderer.

As to Howard’s early points, face to face is still important in making an impact. But to your point, that doesn;t have to be a big trade show. Social networks also facilitate smaller face-to-face meetups, but mostly are opportunisitc, rather than creating the destination points that trade shows are.

As someone else pointed out above, Boston/Valley/New York types and some others lose little, but anyone traveling from somewhere else doesn’t have the network for face-to-face interaction that the tech hub dwellers do. (I’m in Boston btw)

Has anyone ever asked the shows why they have to be so expensive?

I really don’t understand where a lot of the costs go – until you get the bill from the union workers.

I haven’t been to a trade show in years, and I can’t say that I miss them one bit. With so much information at you fingertips these days, it would be hard for me to justify going to a trade show. AS far as having a booth at a trade show, I would have to be selling something very specific to a narrowed audience for it to be worth my time.

I think there’s another side to these big trade shows that we in the media forget about, and that’s the wheeling and dealing that goes on at the booths and in the back rooms. I shoot a CES photoblog for PCMag every year, and as such I try to stop in at every single booth on the show floor (though I’ve never actually achieved my goal). For every photogenic booth with thousands of square feet and expensive displays, there are three smaller booths that are there to conduct business that the companies can’t do anywhere else.

A lot of companies aren’t there for the press coverage or the parties or the lavish Sony and Samsung booths. They’re there to score a few sales, partnerships, better industry contacts, whatever. For these people, a trade show like CES, where everyone is in the same place at the same time, is cheaper than shuttling reps all over the country making individual stops (and granted, web conferencing is cheaper still). I shared a cab with a salesman and his bluetooth headset last year, and judging from his conversation, I’d never heard of his company but their CES ROI was great. These guys will keep CES alive, even if the show morphs into a more typical trade show.

Yep, completely agree…
Though I enjoyed going to trade shows for years, I hardly ever go anymore – as most of the stuff I’ll see there is something I’ve already seen on the internet or received by email.

Though actually getting to meet the people face-to-face might be interesting when we’re doing some business, most of the “search” can now be done remotely instead of walking through corridors… And as it was said, it’s far too expensive for small companies to get some space in there as well – while on the internet… anyone can have their website.

Robert,

May I be ubergeeky and quote Battlestar Galactica?

“All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.”

Bloggers killing trade shows? Nah. It’s cost, pure and simple. It’s part of a cycle.

Comdex imploded long before blogging was commonplace. Remember PC Expo? It’s history, too. Many others are gone. But new ones rise to take their places.

These big shows become wildly popular. Hotel & exhibit space costs rise. Big companies spend big money, but when the economy goes south, so do their marketing & travel budgets. Big moments of chest-thumping – which is all a trade is, really – are often the first things to get cut.

Of course, you could argue that the LAST thing you should cut in a downturn is a chance to tell your story, but that’s another blog post, isn’t it?

Anyway, bloggers have a tendency to think the world revolves around them. They see the giant slain and figure the killer rock must have come from their sling. Not the case, at least in this case.

It’s a cycle. It’s happened before, and it will happen again.

Dwight.

As a CES enthusiast and the guy who calls the shots, I understand some of the sentiment about big shows. That’s why we spend so much time and money to try to make sure the show is navigable and easier to meet up with those with common interests. Check out our website and explore the matchmaking options in mycesweb.org.

I joined CEA because I found and still find CES the most exciting experience on the planet. It is vibrant and allows you to use all five senses to see the best and newest stuff and how companies position themselves. Our entire corporate culture is based on the fact that innovation can come from anywhere and we have to run the show so the smallest entrepreneur with an idea can inexpensively expose it to investors, media and retailers from around the world.

Trade shows work for me because I need the human interaction. Just like real life. Technology is great. But I still need the thrill of holding my wife’s hand.

I agree with the comment about tradeshow vs. conference.

I have a day job as a programmer for a Medical Ass. the conference is a big money maker for my company and the exhibitors. So attendance has great ROI for all parties ( My company, the exhibitors and the attending M.D.s). The education of the M.D.s is what drives this.

But in my side biz of an online kiteboarding shop (http://WindyDevil.com) I have not seen a need to go to any tradeshow. Walking around a large hall to meet with manufactures has no ROI. What I have been doing in this case is going to beach expos and contests that give me ROI because it meet lots of people form manufactures to potential customers and have fun doing the sport I love.

I live in S.F. and I don’t even go to MacWorld anymore.
-Chris

We’re sorry tradeshows! Love, the bloggers.

The best quote I’ve heard about this issue is “Virtual trade shows will replace real trade shows when virtual honeymoons replace actual ones.” The average CES attendee has 12 meetings with professionals from across all their target audiences and emerging (i.e. the non-Apples and major name companies of the world) companies can meet with thousands of media, analyst and bloggers all in one place to make a name for themselves and their products. CES is strong and will continue to be the must-attend event for the global tech industry.

Pitting social media vs tradeshows is misguided. Events ARE social media; they are the original conversational marketing. If anything, social media is what’s driven the growth of shows over the past couple of years. MacWorld is a unique case. Of course all media will suffer in 2009, but shows could actually weather the storm better than many types of media. Marketers who understand that shows are for listening as much as messaging know they need a robust events strategy. And the good news in this economy that while show attendance may go down, the ones who do show up are the ones with real business to transact: active buyers. There’s a quality advantage in terms of the qualification of the attendees; there’s also the quality of the attention they are giving you. Being there in person is the ultimate way of giving someone your attention.

As a couple of folks have pointed out above, events are also the origin of an enormous amount of social media. Video, live blogging/tweeting, etc extend the reach of any show activity. Good events are the source of so much content for bloggers, and the source of so many connections for everyone– we may all be pickier about which events to attend this year, but we’ll still want to go to the revelant and compelling ones.

If you’re Apple, and you have stores on every corner, perhaps you don’t need a show to focus attention on your products (though notice that they’re still doing WWDC…a developer ecosystem still needs a lot of stoking). If you’re not Apple, I’d be very careful how you evaluate live events.

More on this here: http://blog.web2expo.com/2008/12/macworld-loses-the-world-part/

funny. I wrote almost the exact blog entry yesterday for computerworld (“culture crash”). and tara dunion posted almost the exact same response.

small world, eh?

dt

What the media need to do is come experience the 2700 exhibitors at the 2009 International CES — including the 300 new exhibitors that will be there. We are profiling 30 new exhibitors to CES on CESweb.org. CES is three weeks away so let’s see your updates when its been successful!

The last few shows I have been to seem smaller and smaller. With less and less good traffic. It used to be enough to have a good location. Now location doesn’t even matter. It’s hard to get out of the office for local shows. And I like in tech-show central, the Bay Area! Tradeshows are effective, are hard to attribute directly to revenue, and decreasing in influence. Hopefully we can go back to using shows for what they are good for, deepening relationships.

Who you are (vendor or consumer) and what you need out of these marketing tools determine which you should use/go to.

Trade Shows only work (have only ever worked) for both groups when combined with conferences/low-cost training or when you (as a product consumer) already have done your research and want an in-person meeting.

Biz dev using Trade shows to build relationships? Unless you prebook mtgs, it’s like hoping the right fish swims by and jumps in your boat.

Trade Shows are still at the lagging end of the decision cycle to buy or to launch.

SN tools are for everything in the “front end of innovation”.

Personally, I will not miss Las Vegas or Orlando or air travel. I will use virtual technology, I will see you online for the next year or two, if that’s what it takes to keep my company financially strong.

It’s not web 2.0 that’s killing trade shows. It’s the economy. No one is spending money. No one is traveling. Face to face events will return when the economy stabilizes. But never the same as before because there will be a healthy blend of virtual, extending the reach of face2face events globally for those who can’t attend live.

Blogging, social networks, web 2.0 collaboration tools, and virtual events build and sustain business relationships …… especially during economic downturns.

CES is the Tech bloggers Mecca and we enjoy meeting each other as much as we like seeing all the cool new stuff.

But see you have it all backwards, the consumer-focused shows are dying because of increased exposure, but CES is not about the consumer, it’s a trade deal show between buyers and sellers, and that will never go away. The pressy and bloggy peeps, is a rather new phenom. And in the larger picture, with their short attention spans, irrelevant.

Bloggers all went these shows can’t exist without out us, storm the gates, and then once they got bored (about 3 years later), the spin be that all these shows can’t exist without us, make us excited again. Temper your one-day news and live blogging-egos, it was never about you in the first place, which is why CES will thrive.