“We were one of the first shows
to verify our attendance,”
says Consumer Electronics Show
honcho Gary Shapiro.
“When Comdex came after us,
our strategy was to be honest...”
On June 23, 2004, word came that Comdex was
dead at last. While many were shocked by the demise of the great
computer trade event that in its heyday drew more than 200,000
attendees annually to Las Vegas, some industry watchers had
foreseen the end of Comdex and every sprawling computer show like
it for years. They understood Comdex and its cousins were too big
and dissonant, too costly for participants and too slow to adapt in
the new millennium’s dynamic but downsized IT marketplace.
“Comdex was overwhelming to the senses. It was a free-for-all,”
says Karen Zunkowski, event manager for corporate events with
Waltham, Mass.-based Novell and former president of the Computer
Event Marketing Association, based in Coal Center, Pa. “It was
extremely competitive for the attendee’s attention. Eventually,
with costs escalating, exhibitors lost faith in the Comdex
model.”
Indeed, Comdex was simply the biggest domino to fall in a
recent string of old-line IT show cancellations like those of
Business 4Site, CeBIT America, Comnet and Content World, to name a
few. According to the Chicago-based Center for Exhibition Industry
Research, trade shows for the IT sector suffered an overall 22
percent decline between 2000 and 2003, with steep drops in
exhibitors, attendees, revenue and square footage.
In the aftermath of these computer show crashes,
M&C sought to survey the new circuit of tech events
and look at alternatives on the rise.
INSIDE MACWORLD
Mac attack:
Floor action
at a recent
Macworld
Macworld Conference & Expo, produced by IDG Expo of Framingham, Mass., embodies many current trends in today’s tech show marketplace. The event, which runs on both coasts each year, combines a trade show floor with in-depth educational sessions aimed at creative and IT professionals.
“A tech show attendee is on the leading edge and looking for knowledge in advance,” notes Warwick Davies, IDG group vice president and show director of Macworld. “You need to drive people toward what’s going on in the future.”
Because Apple users have a strong sense of loyalty to the machines, the show is strengthened by a built-in sense of community, which is reinforced through
Macworld magazine and the aggressive community outreach efforts of the show’s organizers.
This year, the Apple community spirit was more significant than ever for the event: The East Coast show lost the participation of it’s most important participant Apple Computer when it relocated from New York to Boston. (The San Francisco-based edition of Macworld continues to enjoy Apple’s support.) “I wouldn’t say our effort to reach out to Macworld’s community was to offset the withdraw of Apple from the Boston show,” Davies says. “The proof is we’re doing the same reaching out in San Francisco, where Apple is a part of the show.”
While roughly 10,000 attended the 2004 Macworld in Boston compared with 32,409 at 2004 Macworld in San Francisco, the smaller East Coast event is noted for giving attendees more access and exhibitors more qualified feedback.
Despite the increasingly competitive environment for tech shows, Davies is upbeat. “So long as you’ve identified value for your market constituency, you can continue to have a show as big as the market supports,” he says. “Macworld is an example.” -- B.M.L.
IT takes a village
Technology shows can thrive when plugged in to a bona fide
community. Perhaps nobody can attest to this fact better than Gary
Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association,
a nonprofit trade group that represents more than 1,700 consumer
electronics firms and produces the gargantuan annual Consumer
Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
“We have leaders gathered together here from cable, financial,
broadcast and the IT world and it works,” says Shapiro. “Trade
shows go back to the ancient marketplaces. Trade shows are poster
children for the value of the free market system at its finest and
most delightful.”
While CES has the supersized scale of the old horizontal tech
shows the 2003 International CES comprised more than 1.2 million
square feet of exhibition space and attracted 115,000 attendees the
event builds around a membership community that addresses common
issues and concerns beyond marketing and sales.
“Our whole philosophy is to treat people well and reinvest in
the industry for its betterment,” says Shapiro. “So we have great
loyalty. That’s what associations have that’s intangible. Loyalty
is not something that’s bankable, but it brings attendees and
vendors back every year.”
Perhaps this sense of togetherness, and the devotion it inspires in
attendees and exhibitors alike, is why CES gets credited, more than
any single event, with killing Comdex.
“Comdex overcharged, underinvested, treated customers with
disdain, failed to realize market trends, had infighting and new
owners, and continued to use an old model without adjusting to a
changing marketplace,” says Shapiro.
The struggle between the Consumer Electronics Show and Comdex
intensified as Comdex, traditionally an IT show for
business-to-business trade, took on a consumer-oriented approach.
More momentum is with CES now that it is the last U.S. megashow
standing. “When I first took over, we had 80 members, our staff was
20 people and we had a decent show,” Shapiro recalls. “Now, we’re
up to 1,700 members, we’ve grown by 40 percent in the last year and
we have the largest show in North America, according to
Tradeshow Week.”
While the similarities between Comdex and CES are striking
(both being industrywide Las Vegas-based tech shows), Shapiro
stresses operational differences underpinning the two events.
“Comdex was a competitor. They came after our marketplace, and they
came after our exhibitors with faulty membership numbers,” he
charges. “But we were one of the first shows in the country to
verify our attendance. When we said we had 100,000 attendees and
Comdex said they had 200,000, some of our customers were more apt
to believe us. When Comdex came directly after us, our strategy was
to be honest, to focus on attendee experience, to position
ourselves inside the industry and against Comdex.”
CES sought to prioritize the attendee experience on its trade
show floor, something Shapiro felt Comdex was in no financial
position to do. “Everyone makes business trips, but as trade show
attendees, they’re generally not mandatory,” he explains. “So we
had to push them over the edge. We focused on their transportation
and the thickness of the carpet under their feet. Our obligation is
not to shareholders reaping large profits in the short term. Comdex
was bought and sold a number of times for profit. The people who
bought it had to raise prices for exhibit space and cut expenses by
taking away attendee services. They never understood that
exhibitors and attendees always have choices. They treated
exhibitors and attendees alike as a captive audience. But really,
there’s no such thing as a captive customer.”
Eric Faurot, senior vice president with MediaLive
International, the San Francisco-based producers of Comdex,
acknowledges the entry of the show into the consumer electronics
sphere was “one of Comdex’s missteps.”
But Faurot hastens to defend the show’s relationship with its
old customers: “We’ve gotten literally hundreds of letters from
people encouraging us to bring Comdex back,” he says, adding, “the
people who are going to CES are the people who work at Best Buy,
and a lot of consumers are interested in tech. But corporations
like IBM, Oracle, and EMC are not trying to sell to Best Buy or
those customers. They’re selling to companies and still need a
channel. The $915 billion IT industry still needs an annual
gathering.”
Getting vertical
“I first predicted the death of Comdex back in 1997,” says
Alan M. Meckler, chairman and CEO of Jupitermedia Corp., the
Darien, Conn.-based trade show and media company. “I could see that
shows were starting to get more vertical. Comdex’s problems started
with competition from the Consumer Electronics Show. And, of
course, there was mismanagement. In the future, I don’t see large
horizontal trade shows being able to exist.”
Meckler should know. Aside from being prominent among Comdex
naysayers, he has an impressive history in producing both old-line
horizontal computer shows and the new breed of targeted high-tech
events that in recent years have sprung up like so many Davids to
challenge the Comdex Goliath.
“I was doing computer shows starting in 1975 and created
Internet World the fastest-growing tech trade show in history,”
says Meckler. “I sold that show in 1998 but couldn’t get back in
right away because of a noncompete clause. Finally, I started
producing shows again but went into this very vertical mode.”
Jupitermedia, Meckler’s new company, produces the kind of laser
beam-focused IT events that have succeeded in the same marketplace
where scattershot Comdex failed.
For instance, Meckler points with pride to Search Engine
Solutions an event Jupitermedia created for those who build,
maintain and advertise on Internet search engines. “SES runs three
times a year in the United States and in five countries around the
world,” Meckler explains. “It’s very focused, and this show has
been doubling each year in New York City, San Jose and
Chicago.”
Meckler’s upcoming Search Engines Strategies show in Chicago
exemplifies the precision of focus technology professionals now
demand from such a gathering. Attendance strictly is limited to
those in the search engine field. Sessions include an “Advanced
Link Building Forum” and “Balancing Organic and Paid Listings.”
In other words, if you don’t wake up every morning obsessing
about search engines, this is definitely not your trade show. If
you do, you’ve found nirvana.
Other successful events epitomizing the new stress on
verticality include Pulver.com’s VON Conference & Expo for the
community created around VoIP (Internet-based telephone technology)
and Shorecliff Communications’ RFID World (for those working with
Radio Frequency Identification technology), both of which are just
as strictly defined as Meckler’s SES.
But why do narrowly defined trade shows flourish where Comdex
flopped? In a postbubble tech marketplace, experts agree vertical
shows save both money and time for attendees on penny-pinching
budgets.
“Business people and consumers want what’s relevant to their
specific needs,” says trade show expert Steven Hacker, CAE,
president of the International Association for Exhibition
Management. “A vertical show is relevant. As an attendee, it saves
me time and aggregates the vendors I need to visit. I know that I
may want to see 95 percent of the vendors that are participating at
a niche event. It’s more efficient.”
But is a cozy market niche all a tech show needs to meet
success? Meckler and others say no; much more goes into the formula
for a hit trade event.
Powered by partnership
TechXNY, a New York City-based trade event produced by CMP
Media of Manhasset, N.Y., is a technology-centric show that has
withstood the Comdex-killing marketplace by altering its brand
identity and partnering with others. Once known as PC Expo, the
event ballooned to more than 800 exhibitors and 73,000 attendees at
the height of the 1990s dotcom delirium, then lost participation in
the ensuing bust. Soon thereafter, the event’s managers decided to
take the horizontal show in a different direction. The event is now
marketed as New York’s Technology Week shortened to TechXNY.
“PC Expo started in 1983, when the IBM PC was first launched,”
explains Christina Condos, director of TechXNY. “It made sense to
have a trade show based around the computer, and we evolved through
the years into an industry event. Back round 2000, we started
thinking about rebranding the event, because ‘PC Expo’ didn’t
really describe us anymore. We were finding, with the advent of the
Internet, that it made more sense for us to add more content. TechX
stands for a week of technology. Now, we partner with various
groups to bring content and special features to the show
floor.”
Indeed, TechXNY 2004, recently held at New York’s Jacob K.
Javits Center, was co-located and coordinated with other shows,
each meant to lend a vertical element to a traditionally horizontal
event: Tom’s Hardware Expo, a trade show based around computer
hardware; Wireless Workforce, for mobile computing and automation,
and CETEX, a consumer electronics show. These events drive
participation in TechXNY and create a degree of synergy between
themselves. In 2003, attendance at the joint event surpassed
20,000.
“There are limited ways you can expand your base of customers,”
says IAEM president Steven Hacker. “You can spend money on your own
testing or qualifying, which is expensive. You could buy an event
outright if you have a lot of money. Or, best of all, if you find
events that are strategically compatible with the mission of your
event and co-locate with them, you essentially get the benefits at
little or no cost. That’s what TechXNY has done here.” (For more
about co-locating, see “Trade Shows Joining Forces” here.)
TechXNY has been able to maintain participation due to this
adaptability. “We’ve always been impressed with the quality of
their audience,” says Novell’s Karen Zunkowski, a past exhibitor at
both PC World and TechXNY. “New York City is such a critical
market. TechX has been able to draw some numbers there and have a
pretty successful show.”
A Comdex comeback?
With all the talk about the demise of horizontal
industrywide events, there remains a chance that Comdex will be
revived. The event would be meaner and leaner and more focused, its
organizers say, on the core business-to-business needs of its
primary IT exhibitors.
“In fact, we could have run the show profitably this year,”
says MediaLive International’s Eric Faurot, who served as general
manager of Comdex. “But we didn’t think it was in the best interest
of the industry or the brand without having the broader support of
technology vendors. Last year, we repositioned Comdex. But the
reality is it takes time to build trust back into the brand.”
Indeed, Comdex’s past success always came from the weight of
its own brand name. After all, it was Comdex: the neon-soaked,
over-the-top, best-attended and hyped show in the United States. It
was the pride of the technology sector and the exhibition industry
alike.
But could this year’s cancellation or “postponement,” as
MediaLive’s press release has it destroy the valuable Comdex brand?
Most industry insiders say the show still is needed. In fact, even
among old competitors, there is a feeling that the failure of
Comdex brings down the whole tech-show marketplace.
“I hope they revive it, because I don’t think the demise of
Comdex is good,” says CES’ Gary Shapiro, the man who for so long
locked horns with the megashow. “It was the number-one brand in
trade shows. Believe me, there were no cheers in this office when
they closed down. It wasn’t good for trade shows and it wasn’t good
for us.”
Christina Condos, director of TechXNY, is likewise hopeful for
a restart. “I think it’s unfortunate that Comdex died. It was very
important to the industry. Although we were competitors, we didn’t
compete for an audience.”
Similarly, old exhibitors are cheering for a Comdex
comeback.
“I was sorry that Comdex decided they couldn’t pull the show
off this year,” says Zunkowski. “They were starting to do some of
the right things but couldn’t change perceptions fast enough.”
To rebuild the Comdex brand, MediaLive International has pieced
together an advisory board made up of representatives from the
biggest companies in IT: Cisco, Dell, EMC, Intel, Oracle and
Microsoft. These advisers will recommend changes meant to enhance
participation in the event.
“There’s frustration among buyers out there who have used
Comdex for years as a way to understand trends in their
industries,” says Faurot. “That’s why we’ve built this steering
committee of vendors to really help shape what this event should
look like. You may well see us look something like an association
with the vendors involved.”
In fact, some experts who track the exhibition industry think
Comdex, and horizontal shows in general, might enjoy a
resurgence.
“I promise you that Comdex will be back in a new iteration,”
says IAEM’s Hacker. “There are absolute benefits to this
cross-pollenization that happens peeking over the curtain to see
what’s going on in the next niche. You can’t do that if you’re
operating in strictly vertical mode. The only way that Comdex will
not be back is if some other brand intrudes on that space very
successfully. The only contender that comes to mind is the Consumer
Electronics Show. But unless they change their name and concept,
which they’re not likely to do, they’re leaving too much strategic
turf uncovered. If I were to wager my money,” Hacker concludes, “it
would go on Comdex.”
Yet, doubt about a Comdex rebirth is strong too. “I think it’s
possible Comdex will reemerge, but it will be incredibly
difficult,” Zunkowski says. “It’s not the attendees they need to
convince, it’s the exhibitors. And the exhibitors have moved on to
other event marketing options until the economy swings up big
time.”
Alan Meckler doesn’t think we’ll be seeing another Comdex,
despite the best efforts of MediaLive. “There’s no way to get the
attendance again,” Meckler says. “Once you’ve left a void like
that, it’s almost impossible to come back.”
Stay tuned: Comdex aims to confound its critics. Indeed, Eric
Faurot affirms that a new, improved Comdex is now booked for
November 2005 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. “At this point,
we’re contractually in the building,” he says. “We can make all
these things make sense together.”