a show is more than three days
the situation
Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI) is one of the main organizations in the promotional products industry, and its members are the distributors and suppliers. The ASI Show is its trade show division. When I was there, the major shows were regional, in Orlando, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Chicago, with attendee bases that minimally overlapped, so each had to work for its own market while still feeling like an ASI event.
what i made
Developed new looks for the shows. Some of the major shows and some of the smaller ones, plus logos and digital assets for the events that moved online when COVID closed the show floor.
Produced the marketing around them. Advertising, email marketing, digital assets, downloadable content, and trade show signage, working with the marketing managers. The shows had two audiences who needed opposite arguments: distributors came looking for products and ideas to take back to their own customers, and suppliers came hoping to meet those distributors. Every piece was aimed at one side or the other, and each side's reason to attend depended on the other one turning up.
Shot the shows as official photographer. Keynote speakers, meet and greets, networking events, parties, and the floor itself. That imagery fed ASI's marketing materials, and shooting it meant working the room as much as working the camera.
Built the digital pieces for the smaller shows. Online forms and downloadable attendee directories for fASIlitate, fASI500, and the newer digital events. Smaller rooms, but the same problem: give people a reason to show up and something useful to take away.
what i'd tell you about it
A trade show takes a village. There are a lot of moving parts and a lot of late changes, and the work asks for flexibility as much as it asks for craft. Being the show photographer was the part I enjoyed most, because it put me on the floor with the distributors and suppliers I spent the rest of the year designing for. Being the boots on the ground taught me how the show actually worked, and that is not something a brief can tell you.