Trade shows, like everything else in the industry, are facing their next evolution.
The “L” in trade show LDI’s name once stood for “lighting” (more recently it was changed to “live”). In the future, it might also stand for “Lots of other stuff, too, including audio.” At a time when much of the commercial landscape in the media technology world is moving toward a niche-based paradigm, some of the trade shows that have acted as hubs have sought to become more comprehensive. This is, in part, to address the effects of convergence — as more media technologies become digitally based, their operation and functions increasingly overlap, such as having both Final Cut Pro and Garageband on a single laptop, for example. Additionally, it is an attempt to stem losses from exhibitors that are increasingly taking their products out on “road shows” — demonstrating wares across the country unilaterally or in conjunction with complementary partners.
The 20-year-old LDI has been experiencing exactly that, with defections from this year’s November show in Las Vegas that include anchor exhibitors Martin Professional (a lighting company, not to be confused with Martin Pro Audio) and High End Systems. Other major lighting companies, such as Syncolite and Vari- Lite, have said they would cut back their presence at the show, too. Many cited a reallocation of marketing budgets away from large trade shows and into road shows. Bill Morris, executive vice president at High End Systems, says this has been his company’s strategy for the last year and a half, using “open house”- type events in local markets, bringing the products and training to the customer instead of counting on the trade show to attract them, and calling these tactics “a much more efficient use of time and resources.” Trade shows are still on the agenda, but they will be reviewed annually, he said.
This is the opposite of the “if you build it, they will come” approach that trade shows have historically replied upon. In fact, it seems counter-intuitive to think that adding marginally related industrial sectors to shows would increase their value, particularly when those sectors have plenty of trade shows of their own competing for their marketing dollars. But that’s what LDI was banking on four years ago when it inaugurated ET Live, its P.A. demo area in an adjacent outdoor venue. Companies could set up sound rigs, and attendees could literally get side-by-side comparison capability out of the arrangement. The basis for the putative synergy between lighting and sound is the rise (often via consolidation) of large rental and services companies that want to present themselves as one-stop shops to a greater number of their clients.
Reaction has been mixed to ET Live, but positive enough to keep the experiment alive. Martin Audio, which has had a booth on the main floor at LDI for a decade, didn’t participate in ET Live last year, but Director of U.S. Operations Rob Hofkamp says the idea is still under consideration for this year’s show. He’d like to see the displays organized differently, so that there are more apples-to-apples comparisons available in terms of P.A. types and sizes. But he does like the idea of a large space that can accommodate sizable systems, something audio shows haven’t been able to offer. “You can’t put a line array in a demo room,” Hofkamp said.
Colin Beveridge, president of d&b audiotechnik, is returning to ET Live for a second year, not so much because he is attached to LDI, but simply because it’s a good time and setting in which to invite his own customers to see new products. “It’s a place to plug and play — it could be any trade show,” he says. “I’m not relying on the trade show organizers to bring people in. I’m doing that myself.”
In this regard, the trade show becomes kind of a one-stop road show. Taken a step further, trade shows themselves could become nodes on companies’ own road show strategies. In fact, satellite exhibits like ET Live can help deter another bane of trade show organizers: companies that set up shop in nearby venues like hotel ballrooms and use the gravitational pull of the show to attract attendees.
The idea of a broader range at trade shows has appeal for some. Kevin Madden, national sales manager for digital console maker Innovason, which had its mixers on the QSC stage at ET Live last year, says shows like AES and NSCA serve markets that are increasingly narrow, such as pro audio, and that there are too many of them. “I’d rather have fewer, more broad-based shows,” he says, adding that road shows are good for companies that have a diversity of interlocking brands, like Harman (which has an ongoing road show), or irresistibly attractive products (a situation which is implicitly fleeting, although Pro Tools does seem to defy gravity). Otherwise, partnering is essential, but after a while, even that can become little more than a micro-trade show of its own. InfoComm is a show that is cited often by audio and lighting companies alike as having gotten it right, acknowledging convergence in its mix of exhibitors.
Jeffrey Cox, vice president of EAW, which exhibits at ET Live, says the fact that it’s an appendage of a mostly lighting-focused show is irrelevant. “As a manufacturer, I’m looking for those opportunities that allow us to display and demonstrate a greater breadth of products than we can at a traditional audio show,” he says. “Given the choice between trying to describe to someone how an enclosure sounds and actually letting them hear it themselves, I’ll take the latter any day.”
There is a city on the northwest coast of Belgium called Bruges that, during the Middle Ages, was one of Europe’s most active trading centers. Then, the tides shifted — literally — and today it’s a remote and muddy tourist attraction. The notion of the trade show as the ultimate annual destination is slipping away, inevitably perhaps, given the sea changes wrought by technology. Synergy should be the goal for trade shows — let participants in a convergent landscape interact.
But people also still want to see, hear and touch stuff, and talk to each other besides on the phone or through e-mail. The trade show could have television’s The Family Guy as its trope: named for its central character, but driven by the parallel narratives created by its “secondary” cast. The legacy trade shows will continue to experience turbulence around the main event as marketing strategies evolve, but at least for the highly technical trades, where better for a geek to shine than at the side show?
