Why do companies continue to exhibit themselves?

Driving away from the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham after a brief visit to a relatively small exhibition with a focus on a niche sector of the industrial components market, I wondered as always, about the marketing value of exhibitions. Just why do companies expend so much resource on exhibitions? Will the web hasten their demise as it seems to be doing with print? Consider the show I attended – 130 exhibitors mostly with shell schemes in a single exhibition hall at the NEC. The visitors almost exclusively male, few younger than 40, in the main wearing well worn suits with ties – typically engineers and probably mostly from the west midlands. Most stands exhibited a seemingly identical collections of stainless steel widgets, unimaginatively presented and with the more adventurous using flat screen monitors running endless loops of amateurishly produced PowerPoint sequences. Engineering types, similarly attired to their visitors, hovered ready to pounce or simply waited sat at tables engrossed in their lap tops or using their mobile phones. Some stands were not even manned! Of course the exhibition organisers with their slick admission systems will claim yet another record year with more overseas visitors when they pitch to sell space for next year. My own observation is that many such exhibitions become a club and travelling circus for the exhibitors themselves. Thee opportunity to travel the country, even the world with a familiar crowd, who are actually competitors, incurring not only the exhibition costs but shipping, travel, accommodation and of course entertaining. A big dent in the marketing budget. So how many of these companies set objectives and measurable targets for an exhibition so the results can be evaluated? How many new customers do they attract and remember all the competitors will have seen them too? Of course there is the unspoken fear of not exhibiting – they will be more noticed by their absence and risk negative speculation by competitors and despite denials, exhibitors kind of like being on show.