yARN: Do we really need CeBIT?
- 15 May, 2009 17:33
- Comments 6
So, CeBIT is over for another year. The vendors, resellers and distributors have packed up their wares and shuffled off home, while attendees try to remember just what it was all about.
As I wandered through the exhibition hall this year, I started to ponder its relevance. With the wonders of the Internet, it is very easy to find basic information on any given product, from any given vendor, from any given country (excluding our dear friends in North Korea).
So with the expense of setting up a display at tradeshows like CeBIT, you have to wonder just how much can be achieved when there’s a hundred similar, if not carbon-copy displays, bombarding people as they hurry by.
You could argue that being able to touch and feel, or see the product first hand is one of the benefits of a tradeshow. But in most cases, a sales meeting in the relative comfort and relaxed pace of an office would have a better success rate, surely?
Conventions can work well – you only need to look at a Tokyo Game Show or an E3 for quality examples. But they are for a consumer audience where the wares being hawked are impulse buys; products that rely on a flashy presence in the market.
But a typical professional walking through CeBIT won’t be sold on anything then and there. (Is there any research on this? Anyone?)
I liken CeBIT to the spa stalls I see every year at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. I can’t, for the life of me, see how anyone will go to the Show, see a spa and suddenly realise it’s the missing piece in their lives.
CeBIT strikes me as a hall full of spa stalls pushing the impulse buy. And while the hit rate will likely be somewhat better for IT at CeBIT over the Easter Show spas, in these economic times I believe there are more effective and accurate ways of getting your product into clients’ offices.
But perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe there are people that walk away from the Easter Show with a spa, rather than a giant stuffed soft toy. Yet, I doubt it.
To be fair, thanks to CeBIT I will soon be the proud owner of a $99 pen with a video camera built into it. I have had delusions of emulating James Bond since I was a child – it’s about time I fulfilled them.
But looking back at this year’s CeBIT, I’m afraid I just wasn’t that convinced it was the place to learn about the wonders of datacentre cooling or how to set-up a WiFi antenna.
Anyone for a spa?
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Comments
Phil Sim
Worked for us!
Matthew, as a niche company exhibiting at CEBIT, we certainly got more than enough leads to justify our participation.
I think why trade shows are having a bit of a mini-revival at the moment is that while there was still a lot of 'noise' to compete with, with a couple of hundred other exhibitors, that's still almost a silence compared to the barrage of ads, emails and marketing messages that are dropped on all of us, all day, every day.
At least, you know that people who are taking the time out to go and visit a show like CEBIT are doing so because they're looking for new products or ideas, so they're in a mindset where they're willing to listen rather than just trying to deflect and/or avoid your marketing messages.
Anonymous
How many of your leads turn into sales though?
Plus how much of the stuff at CeBIT is really different to every day marketing? Most of the crew sent to trade shows are just sales staff - the same ones you get the other marketing guff from.
That said - if you are a niche company that struggles to get attention, then I can see how CeBIT would help.
Anonymous
CeBit is a dinosaur
My company has managed to avoid CeBIT for years as it is probably the last bastion of a long distant pre internet world. Unfortunately it perpetuates the myth that the ICT world is still about buying commodities. Commoditisation is the enemy of the channel and it amazes me that anyone turns up to ceBIT. Matthew's analogy to the Easter Show is apt and I think CeBIT perpetuates because punters see it as a change from doing real work and after all the boss is paying for people to wander around and look at products that they should already know all about. Business cards chucked in a bowl to win a prize hardly qualify as leads.
By the way Matthew, you should have stuck to the internet to make your purchase, your $99 video enabled pen has been selling on Graysonline for about $19 lately.
Anonymous
The last comment mostly summed up my reason for attending.
Some will arrogantly say the Internet is King and that if I can't get what I want by searching then I shoudn't be selling - This is RUBBISH thinking.
As a small onsite consultancy team we are continously looking for ways to create better solutions to client needs. I personally spend 1-5 hours a day, week in, week out researching lots of issues and offered solutions. And yes I know how to search and have been doing it longer than there was a commercial Internet.
So is the Internet my friend when finding stuff that I know exists? Nah, nope, maybe some of the times. There is just so much crap, noise, lying and vain marketing junk on the Net that takes a large effort to find interesting solutions.
To us CeBIT presents a small group of distributors who are willing to take a significant financial and time/effort risk to get a message across and connect with people. To us, business is about connecting with people who either have needs we can meet or able to meet our needs for our business & clients. That is why the personal touch is still important.
Maybe CeBIT and I are dinosaurs in a world full of 10,000+ neon signs per Internet block but it is refreshing to meet face t face with people, not a display screen image.
David S
Anonymous
Worked for us also!
I found that this year although quieter, it had a much more focused audience and the leads we have are more likely to result in business as opposed to previous years where there were a lot of time wasters.
Anonymous
Well worth the trip
I had been wanting to go to this but always had something else on but made a definite effort to go this year and I was very glad I did. Picked up a heap of information, and quite a few leads.
I think trade shows still have their place with face to face communication.
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