An engaged, passionate, enthusiastic booth staff is every trade show marketer's dream. 3D Exhibits client Garden of Life made it a reality.
How, you ask, did Garden of Life accomplish this difficult challenge? By thinking of exhibit staff as one of the key components of its comprehensive integrated exhibit design and marketing plan.
Garden of Life creates organic nutritional products that help people take control of their own health. For Natural Products Expo West, its strategy was to focus on its philosophy rather than its products so people would understand what the brand is all about.
In order to communicate the company's commitment to organic farming, Garden of Life worked with 3D Exhibits to create a "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids"-scaled organic garden. The exhibit design—themed "I Dig the Garden" included 13'-high gardening tools wedged into a mound of dirt, towering blades of grass and sprouts, and a 14' watering can with a honeybee perched on top—which also doubled as a conference room.
Garden of Life assigned its staff the roles of various elements of nature that enrich the garden—after all, an organic garden is a living, breathing thing. This included Air, Water, Compost, Earthworm, Manure, Sunshine and Worker Bee. They created t-shirts for each with fun phrases such as, "I'm a worker bee, let's pollinate," and "I'm compost, let's break it down."
Via the company blog, Garden of Life set a fun tone by inviting attendees to, "Walk on our soil and bump into Air, Water, Compost, Earthworm, Sunshine and Worker Bee. You may want to avoid Manure, but that's up to you!"
Before the show, the exhibit staff met to discuss their roles. They were given key messages to share and instructed to have fun with their characters and use their personaes to convey why organic farming is so important and the role consumers can play on moving the organic movement forward.
Armed with a mission, a message, a role to play and permission to make it fun, the staff went all out. They engaged, entertained and educated visitors through out the show, creating a ton of booth traffic and a ton of buzz (excuse the pun).
How do you engage and impassion your exhibit staff?
