THE cyber-show MUST GO ON - the future of trade shows

Brandweek,  May 7, 2001  by Alan Cohen

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Online business expos are entering their next generation

If you want to talk to Charlie Greco about virtual trade shows, you're going to have to alter your vocabulary. The word that Greco likes is digital, not virtual. And, yes, it makes a difference. Virtual shows get the oohs and aahs. They're the slick, three-dimensional exhibition halls generated on your computer. Digital is the relatively boring stuff: low-tech Web pages that tell you about an exhibitor and the products it's pitching. There's no roaming, no 3D, no fancy effects.

So it may seem surprising that Greco, the president and CEO of IDG World Expo, is betting on digital as the future of the online show. Surprising, that is, until you realize that for all its flash, the virtual trade show has never quite lived up to the hype.

Three years ago, virtual shows weren't just going to enhance their physical counterparts, they were going to obliterate them. After all, why pay hundreds of dollars to fly cross-country, spend hours roaming a convention hall and eat lousy food to see a show that you could access via computer? But the virtual show went virtually nowhere. And most of the companies that built them either went belly-up or found themselves new business plans.

Meanwhile, the traditional trade show business was booming, growing between 8 and 9 percent in each of the past three years, according to media merchant bank Veronis Suhler. "People underestimated the fact that personal contact was key," says Greco. "It's called face-to-face marketing for a reason."

The online trade show is far from dead, however. Indeed, the show producers who once feared the Internet as a rival are now embracing it as a partner. They also see it as a revenue-generating opportunity. Still, there's little agreement on the best way to go about this. Namely, how much technology is too much? The 3D shows are graphically impressive but require fast computers and network connections, and even then can seem slow and choppy to view. The elaborate virtual shows are also expensive to create. Expocentric, the British company that built the currently online Comdex/Asia show, has spent $12 million on its technology, which so far has been used for just a handful of events. No doubt, the less impressive, less expensive digital shows that IDG and others are ramping up are a less risky proposition. But will they spur enough interest to attract users--and exhibitor dollars?

Until recently, most of the online action revolved around the pre-show period. Advanstar, for example, has built a novel scheduling module into the site for its Licensing 2001 International show, set for June in New York. Attendees can request a meeting with an exhibitor, and once accepted, the appointment appears in the visitor's online event planner. "Eighty-five percent of people who attend exhibitions come with an agenda," says Douglas Ducate, president of the Center for Exhibition Industry Research. "This lets them identify companies and schedule appointments."

Likewise, IDG has big plans for its pre-show site. At its digital shows, which are still in development but expected to make their debut in time for this year's MacWorld and Linux World events, visitors will be able to view conference schedules and then plug sessions into an online date book. They'll also be able to visit--if not walk around and inside--two-dimensional exhibitor booths.

What they'll be able to see and do there will depend on how much the exhibitor is willing to pay. IDG is still working on the pricing plans, but the general idea, Greco says, is simple: The more a company spends, the more content it can put up. Greco wouldn't discuss how much IDG is spending to build these quasi-virtual shows, but notes that the cost is four times that of its current show sites.

Other trade show producers think that focusing on the pre-show misses a big opportunity. Penton Media, whose trade show arm produces 185 annual exhibitions and conferences, including Internet World, is taking a much more ambitious--and risky--approach. Its online shows will be year-round events, accessible via an ubersite called B2Bshowplace.com.

B2Bshowplace is a work in progress, but you can visit the first fledgling shows. These are built around Penton's industrial-media division, which caters to, among other fields, aviation, design engineering, and manufacturing and distribution. The first and most elaborate exhibition is Penton's HVACRshowplace.com, designed to support the company's annual real-world Comfortech show.

The site is no artistic masterpiece. Log on and you'll see a list of exhibitors. Click on one and a rather uninspired picture of a booth appears onscreen. Click on one of the products displayed and a description pops up; click on a phone icon to get contact information for the exhibitor.

But the low-tech look is deceptive: There are some nifty features. For example, in some booths you'll see a door labeled Conference Room. Here, exhibitors can put on presentations (using slides and whiteboard) for up to 300 attendees. Now, users need to be linked via a teleconference to talk while viewing the presentation, but John Ehlen, the general manager and director of sales for B2Bshowplace, expects eventually to leverage Internet telephony so the calls are via computer.