We are continuing our series on exhibit planning. Now about 5-6 weeks before the show, we noticed that our exhibit location on the floor was between other exhibitors in a linear 10 x 10. The floor plan and our booth space had changed. We thought we had an end booth.
We also set up the exhibit in-house in a measured 10 x 10 space and realized the need to shoot video at an angle due to the shorter distance between the camera and the subject. This meant that we needed to put the video camera on a tripod in the very front corner and have the interview seating in the opposite back corner. This brought up some questions and concerns:
- How would our neighbors react to the lights and camera shooting live in the booth space?
- How would we block out our neighbors exhibit so it did not get in the shot?
- We really, really needed an end of aisle exhibit like we thought we originally booked.
To answer the first question, we would not expect our neighbors to be concerned with the tripod and camera on the front corner, even if it was over the limit at a 4 or 5 foot height. Many front counters have monitors and other items that stick up past the siderail. These smaller items do not tend to seriously block visibility of your neighbors’ exhibit (which is the reason for the rule) and everybody does it, so it is generally accepted.
To answer the second concern, we decided it would be good to create full height side extensions onto the exhibit. Previously, I talked about international rules that were established by the IEEE organization. 
The rules for linear exhibit say that you can have full height side walls that measure up to 50 percent of the booth space’s depth. So since we are in a 10’ deep booth space, we can have 8’ tall side walls that are 5’ deep on both sides of the exhibit. We all agreed that this was an important modification. We asked the Design Department to do a mockup of this change to show their concept of how the side walls would look.
The third concern, about needing an end aisle booth location, was twofold. When I first booked our space last year, we wanted to be in the 1600 aisle where there was a lot of traffic. I always say it is good to check out a show ahead of time. This show proved that well, as some of the booth location rules I talked about in earlier episodes did not apply to this show’s floor plan. The larger exhibits were more on the left side of the exhibit hall and with only four show hours per day, attendees concentrated their time towards that side of the hall.
The second part of our number three concern had to do with the back wall graphic. In our Exhibitor
Lounge videos, we always acknowledge our sponsor, Exhibit Edge, and their logo is on the lower right side of the exhibit (from the perspective of the audience). If we could change to an end aisle location it needed to be on the left side, so we could avoid blocking the Exhibit Edge logo with the interview chairs.
So we really wanted to move to an end aisle location, we wanted to stay in the high traffic 1600 aisle, and we wanted an audience left end space. We contacted the sales department for ExhibitorLive, told them our needs, and after a few weeks we were able to secure a space that just became available, as another exhibitor decided to upgrade to a larger space. We got the space we needed and the ExhibitorLive sales department really worked with us to help. A good analogy that I can give you is if you have an airplane seat that you don’t like, keep checking online to see if another seat becomes available.
It was a big win for us. We got a new booth space, we figured out some booth flow requirements, and we moved forward with the look of the exhibit adding new sidewalls
Stay tuned for more in our series on trade show planning!