Industry Inspiration From #viscomffm
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Viscom Frankfurt might not be on many people’s calendars in our industry (yet) but this year it was on ours and we spent a delightful few days in Frankfurt last week manning the digital signage / blogger lounge in the middle of digital signage world and next to the show-floor lecture theatre.
Figure 1. Nice mix of vinyl and backlit posters
The way that Reed Exhibition’s Petra Lassahn organises and handles the event reminds us a lot of the way that Lawrence Dvorchik handles #cetw.
It’s all very personal, incredibly friendly and those who exhibit are incredibly loyal and have a real love for the show.
As does Lawrence, Petra pays attention to the little details: our blogger lounge, for example, was perfect, closed off, quiet, comfy chairs, coffee machine, free wi-fi (all set up by them not us), the most attentive support staff you can imagine and flowers on every table! The only thing it was missing was M&Ms and we supplied those of course – and every day, towards the last hour of the show, drinks and nibbles flowed and were consumed on exhibitors’ stands as people mingled.
Figure 2. Learn from the scroller manufacturers
Overall the show was very professional, incredibly well organised and whilst the digital signage world is still a small section of the whole, it is growing nicely year on year and, as we will explain in a bit, there is a nice overlap between the sign makers and the retail merchandisers who exhibit and attend also.
Figure 1. shows a nice mix of vinyl and backlit posters – Yep there is nothing in there which is digital, but we loved the way that the graphic designer had laid everything out and then hung it precisely on wire on the stand.
The scroller manufacturers who seem to attend all of the Viscom events around Europe are a great example of just how good an exhibitor stand can look – using ‘real’ branded campaign posters helps, of course, but they always hang it all together (no pun intended) so well – the co-ordination of activity on the stand shown in Figure 2. and the general attention to detail was amazing and reflected really positively on their brand.
Out of our #DSTop10 software vendors, C-nario should be applauded for understanding what a big market Germany is (and can and will be) and indeed partnering with sdi Gmbh (and LG) with what was undoubtedly the best stand in the digital signage world area -and yes, it included this best ever digital print / digital signage comparison that we could rave on about all week (and probably will).
There was no sign of coverage from Ooh-tv or invidis – two companies with a base in Germany and who purport to cover the region. Anyway, their loss is our gain as the German market is alive and well and this is one show – #viscomdus is actually Viscom Dusseldorf being held 13th – 15th October in 2011 – that our industry should not miss!
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