I don’t know whether it was the early morning run around the Philadelphia Museum of Art and up and down the steps Rocky Balboa worked out on, or decorative WorldatWork logo painted on event organizer Audrey Johnson’s toenails, but the second full day of exhibiting went well (she definitely put the creative in creativity).
Per the WorldatWork folks, the official counts hadn’t changed from the project 2,000 attendees and the almost 200 vendors.
Pretty steady booth traffic combined with intelligent questions from prospective buyers made for a great day. We talked with many HR suppliers – current HRmarketer members, prospects and old members contemplating returning to the fold – all of which seemed mostly pleased with the leads they were securing.
I say mostly because trade shows are always a mixed bag of tricks and treats when it comes to lead gen. The visibility and traffic (2 of our 3 marketing/PR meditations) gained at events like this aren’t cheap, and if you’re a vendor who exhibits and sponsors, like us, your immediate return is at best not immediate at all. (NuView Systems was telling us that when they give away a gadget like an iPod, they get a lot of “garbage” in the fish bowl. HRmarketer member IHRIM was right across from us and they said they were having pretty good traffic.)
While I manned the booth, our sales team, Jonathan and Jocelyn, hit the aisles throughout the day and talked marketing/PR talk with the vendors who weren’t pitching themselves. (I had shared with our main office that we were pitching harder than a juiced Roger Clemens.) Most were receptive to our pending new site launch and marketing methodology – the Marketing PR Lead Generation Processsm – although the bigger kids like Vurv (soon to be Taleo), Authoria and SuccessFactors were stocked with young, energetic sales folk who stared blankly at us like foreign exchange students being asked who the 9th U.S. President was. Watson Wyatt gave us a nod though with one of their staff saying how much their son love wearing our HRmarketer “mouse” t-shirt!
We didn’t attend any of the sessions (busy throwing lobs over the plate for the vendors to hit out of the park), but heard from many of the attendees who stopped by our booth (are you that Grossman fella?) that they were very informative and valuable. In between the live social networking, Jonathan and I tweeted away about the show and Philadelphia.
The social event last night, sponsored by HRmarketer member Hay Group, was at the National Constitution Center, not far from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Tasty libations and food were everywhere while we mingled among attendees, vendors and bronzed life-size statues of the founding fathers. There was a multi-media presentation about the founding of America and the meaning of “we the people” over the generations that has made this country so amazing. Quite moving indeed.
I’m back home now gearing up for our new site launch and tending to our clients, but there’s still one more day of exhibiting today that I’m sure Jonathan will blog about soon.
WorldatWork (yet another HRmarketer member) puts on a fine show. Well done!
Posted by Kevin GrossmanLabels: booth traffic, exhibiting, marketing, public relations, social networking, WorldatWork
