A few years ago I was exhibiting at the Ideal Homes Exhibition and as usual things were slowly coming together, but it was going to be close. I always have a last minute panic, when I truly believe that it is not all going to come together and I am going to be left looking like an idiot with a lot of taffeta and soft furnishings around me looking like a mess. This particular year everything came together about a week before and we were all ready. I cannot take any credit – I have a great team – and they had everything under control from the beginning.
With a little over a week to go, it became obvious that we had omitted one very important part of exhibiting.
People come to exhibitions to see you and what you do, but you need to make sure that they remember you when they get home, or the whole exercise has been pointless. It is extremely important to ‘wow’ in the first place, or they are unlikely to come anywhere near your stand and once they are there you need to make sure that you can inspire them. If you have got these two in the bag, then you need to be able to give people something to take away; something to help them remember who you are. We had the usual leaflets and business cards, but we needed something else.
I trawled through the net for hours, searching for something that was practical, not complicated, small so could be easily packed and that was going to be deliverable in 5 working days or so. Then I stumbled across Newell Rubbermaid ‘Corporate Gifts and Promotional Products’ and their 2IN5 offer. In short you get a 2 colour branded Sharpie or Paper Mate pen in 5 days – hence the 2IN5. So that is exactly what I did and put our logo and our website on the pen. The pen’s looked great and the feedback from our customers at the exhibition was good too. But what did it for me was when a customer called up a few months later and said that he’d come across the pen we gave in and remembered how much he’d liked our designs. The next thing I know is that we were doing the interior design of his bedroom and dinning room. Perfect!