Visual Branding for Events

I’ve changed my mind about trade shows. 6 months ago, I talked about how ineffective they were as a marketing tactic. - Booths cost £1000s - No one gets new business. - You get ignored by attendees. - Everyone is just pitching at you. - There are 100s of competitors there. - You get drowned out by other vendors. They’re a massive waste of time. Or at least that’s what I thought… Then I got sent the photos (below) from one of our clients’ booths at a recent trade show. That’s when I realised trade shows aren’t the issue. ↳ It’s how companies approach them that’s broken. The key: Create a campaign around your booth. Here’s the playbook for getting noticed at trade shows: 1/ Don’t Make Yourself The Attraction Our client hired Kaleb from Clarkson’s Farm to be at their booth. Crowds flocked for a chat, photo, or simply to see what all the fuss was about. They came for Kaleb. ↳ But then they’d chat to our client. —— 2/ Turning a Booth Into an Experience They ditched the usual trade show freebies and brought in a VR welding setup. Kaleb set a time. ↳ People tried to beat it. ↳ If they did they won a prize. This meant visitors weren’t just walking by—they were staying, engaging, and talking about it. —— 3/ Force Them To Remember You Here’s where it got clever: Our client offered a hefty reward for the person who won the VR welding game. But they wouldn’t find out if they won until the end of the day. That meant the last booth people went to was there. ↳ Keeping them top of mind on the way home. —— Don’t get me wrong, most trade shows are a waste of money. But if you go into them: - With a clear strategy. - An approach to get noticed. - A campaign around your booth. They can really make an impact. Definitely going to be doing more of this with clients. P.S. Follow me to learn how to get your company noticed Niall Ratcliffe 📚

Something has been on my mind lately: focal points in booth design. A well-done focal point cuts through the noise, sparks curiosity, and makes your booth instantly more memorable. It's like a visual anchor, guiding visitors toward the information and products you want them to see. Plus, it's a fantastic way to showcase the brand identity – think about a bold logo display, a product demonstration that embodies your values, or an interactive experience that reflects your brand personality. The possibilities are endless! Just remember to keep it clear and easy to understand, make sure it ties into your overall booth design, and be mindful of accessibility.

Exhibiting at events takes time and effort. Having been only on brand presence creation and storytelling coordination side with clients before, this time I was the exhibitor myself. And I can tell you, it’s a lot of work to put “a show” on 😊. But in the end, that effort pays off and you feel proud of the team and the work that went into it. So here are several things I learned from this experience: 1.    Get a speaking slot.  If the event offers that, definitely it. Builds authority and invites people to come talk to you after. 2.    Invest into stellar presence.   Do not show up with scrappy looking pull up banners. Create a clear simple message that makes people pause as they walk by.  And use clean visuals that represent your brand and makes people stop.   3.    Have your elevator pitch ready. Test different ways of delivering it and observe people’s reactions. This is a good way to see what resonates and what lands flat. 4.    Make engagement seamless.  Have QR code with your calendar, lead capture, well-designed flyers to pass around and drive traffic to the booth. It shows you are prepared. 5.    Know your goals. Decide on those before the event so you can easily measure ROI (be it brand awareness, sales, partnerships, etc). 6.    Prioritize quality conversations. Give your best swag to those who had meaningful talks with you, not just anybody walking by. (I did not always remember to do it and I regret).   7.    Handle the “freebie hunters” with humor. If visitors are stopping by with one goal – to load up their bags with giveaways from every booth they visit like it’s Christmas time, engage them with “Hello, how can I help you?” It will either spark a conversation or deter those who are not interested. 8.    Have listening ears and be inquisitive. Be intentional in asking questions to gauge what problems your potential clients are dealing with. This is direct market research for you. Grab people where they are. 9.    “Walk” the booth. It helps bring energy that there’s action happening and entices people to stop to talk. 10. Celebrate and debrief. Immediately after the event document what worked and what didn’t. This learning will inform next event decision-making. 3 things I wasted time on: 1.    Figuring out the activity for the booth. Not necessary unless you are selling a product. Otherwise, just having a conversation that's informative is sufficient. 2.    Big one - chasing perfection. Visitors rarely notice what you think went wrong. They remember your presence, your energy, your conversations. Not a misplaced giveaway item. 3.     Cold reaching out. Without knowing if the participants will be there in person, it’s much more difficult to grab their attention. Best to just walk around the exhibition and have conversations in person. What’s one thing you’ve learned from being on the exhibitor side? I’d love to compare notes.

A lot of trade show booths ask people to work way too hard. Read the sign. Look at the product. Try to figure out why it matters. That is usually where you lose them. The better booths make the story easier to understand fast. That was the opportunity with LifeStraw. The product is strong. The mission is strong. But on a busy show floor, none of that lands if people cannot connect with it right away. So instead of just putting the product on display, we built an environment where people could actually interact with it. A faux river. Real product testing. A setting that felt true to the brand and made the use case obvious. That changed the whole experience. It stopped feeling like a booth people had to decode and started feeling like something they could step into and understand for themselves. I think about that a lot when it comes to booth strategy. If the experience is doing its job, the product story gets a whole lot easier to tell. And usually, those are the booths people remember. . #experientialmarketing #tradeshowmarketing #brandexperience

Most CPG brands' trade show booths are a waste of money. There. I said it. I was walking the floor at Winter Fancy Faire recently, and it became painfully obvious. The booths that stopped me weren’t the biggest. They weren’t the most expensive. They weren’t the ones with 20 reps standing around awkwardly. They were the ones that understood one thing: Attention is design. Here’s what actually grabbed me: Backlit backdrops. If your backdrop isn’t lit and doesn’t fill the full frame, it immediately feels temporary. Cheap. Forgettable. Lazy. The fully backlit walls glow. They pull you in from 50 feet away. Bold color. Look at these photos. Orange. Hot pink. Electric blue. Saturated red. In a sea of beige carpet and black pipe-and-drape, bold wins. And if bold isn’t your brand then minimal and ultra-clean works too. Clutter never does. Pattern. Repeated product graphics. Oversized pack shots. Graphic wallpaper made from your own SKUs. Pattern builds rhythm. Rhythm builds memory. Dimension. Something large. Unexpected. Three-dimensional. It doesn’t have to be crazy expensive. But flat walls and a folding table feels empty. Product display with intention. The best booths weren’t just stacking cases. They created moments. Organized sampling. Built mini retail experiences. Showed their POP display in action. And one detail most brands ignore: Coordinated attire. The booths that felt premium had teams dressed like a team. Same colors. Same vibe. Same energy. When your people look random, the brand feels random. Here’s the controversial part: Many brands spend months obsessing over packaging then show up to a trade show with a wrinkled tablecloth and a vinyl banner. Your booth is packaging at 10x scale. It’s your brand in 3D. You don’t need a massive budget. You need cohesion. Confidence. And commitment to the visual system. If you’ve attended Fancy Food (or any trade show), what’s the one booth you still remember? And why? #CPG #FancyFoodShow #TradeShowDesign #Branding #PackagingDesign #RetailStrategy

Tradeshow booth, brand activation or host event, doesn't matter, audience and customer experience is vital to success. Here are two questions you must highly consider before creating, planning, concepting and designing... 1. How do you want your audience/customer to feel when they have left? This may be B2B event marketing, but we are all human. Humans operate on feelings. You should decide how you would ideally like them to feel. Is it... appreciated, excited, impressed, fun, confident, intrigued. Then concept and plan accordingly. Feelings resonate, they stay with people, both good and bad. The feeling your audience/customer leaves with is the impression they have of you. It's the ol' saying, "what have you done for me lately." This is qualitative and subjective, but in my experience, anytime we have worked with a client, and helped them move from a corporate, boring, run of the mill tradeshow booth -----> a experiential, concept or idea driven tradeshow booth focused on the customer. The feedback we always get is, "we got so many compliments, and way more traffic." They are throwing a different energy out there and showing up different. People see that, they remember it, and your message has a better chance of sticking. 2. What do you need people to walk away knowing? Ask yourself. What is your companies unique POV or stance on the industry? What is the problem you solve for your customer? What is your unique value proposition? Is there a mission or purpose to the event or activation? Do you want to define a clear line in the sand between you and your competition? New product or service launch education? The questions above are typically what is centered around what you will want your audience/customer to walk away with from your booth, activation or event. Now ask yourself, how do we effectively communicate this? Here are some ideas where; - Messaging. Get creative with your messaging. Short, sweet, stand out, specific. Be repetitive and have it everywhere, especially if the message is excellent. - Presentation setup, style and delivery. (ex. keynote, podcast, panel discussion, fireside chats, hands on instruction, entertainment, demos) - Themed appearance/design. Can you take the message you want to convey and tell a story through design, layout, eye catching engagement, colors, style, vibe, architecture? Be bold in your attempt. Tell a story and stand out in a way that raises questions, where the answers lead to your message trying to be conveyed. - Engagement games or activations to help connect the dots. Can you utilize gamification, or an activity to connect the dots for your customer? Is your value proposition a product that cuts down installation time compared to competitors? Example would be to do live mock installations, time them, maybe make a game from it and let people participate. #customerexperiencedesign #customerexperience #tradeshowmarketing #eventmarketing

👀 Buyers are scanning hundreds of booths at Expo. If your branding, messaging, and product aren’t clear in 5 seconds, 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺. Let me be clear about this: I don't come across a lot of big brands, spending $50-$100k or more on a booth that doesn't have their shit together. This is for the emerging brands trying to figure it out. The ones on a budget, with limited staff, and don't have professional teams doing design & setup. Buyers have a great time walking through the North Hall or Basement, where those emerging brands are. If you are looking to get Buyer's attention in those areas you want to keep a few things in mind for your booth setup: ✅ Keep it simple and bold—your brand and product should be easy to see from 20ft away. ✅ Use the vertical space—Big, clear signage of your brand helps buyers know where to spend their time. ✅ Don’t overload the space—too much clutter can make it difficult for Buyers to navigate. 🚫 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: ❌ Walls of text on banners (no one’s reading a novel at a trade show). ❌ Random gimmicks that don’t align with your brand. ❌ Expecting buyers to “figure out” what you do. 👉 𝗞𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗶𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿. 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹. 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴. A great booth doesn’t just look good—it works. In your opinion, what's the most important part of a booth at Expo? #cpg #buyersperspective #astracpg

Let’s talk about one of the biggest questions that comes up every time someone budgets for branded merchandise: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗢𝗜? It’s easy to feel uneasy when you’re asked to spend on workwear, promo products, or gifts and the first reaction is often, “𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘦 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨?” Most of the time, companies just see branded gear as a cost line on a spreadsheet. 𝙄𝙩’𝙨 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙙𝙤 𝙗𝙚𝙘𝙖𝙪𝙨𝙚 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨 𝙞𝙩. But the truth is, when you treat merchandise like a strategy instead of a giveaway, you can see some real results. The key is figuring out how to track them. 🗝️ Here’s a quick example. A Houston-based energy company came to us wanting something different for their next trade show. They’d always handed out basic swag: pens, stress balls, things that end up forgotten or tossed. This time, we suggested investing in high-quality branded workwear, gear people would actually want to keep and wear. But we didn’t stop there. We helped them attach a QR code on the tag and set up a landing page just for the event. 𝗔𝗻𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝗼𝗿 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆. After the event, their team did a simple tally: 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘯? 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘴𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘫𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘴? 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸-𝘶𝘱 𝘮𝘦𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴? The difference was clear: booth traffic went up, leads were easier to trace, and employees started wearing the gear both on and off the job site, spreading brand visibility way beyond the event itself. If you’re still just handing things out and hoping for the best, you’re guessing. But if you plan ahead, set up a way to track engagement, and choose products that actually matter to your audience, 𝙮𝙤𝙪’𝙡𝙡 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙣𝙪𝙢𝙗𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙪𝙥 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙞𝙣𝙫𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩. 𝗠𝘆 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲? Always tie your merch to something measurable: a call-to-action, a unique event page, a specific sales follow-up, even an employee survey. Track what you can. 𝘈𝘴𝘬 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬. Branded merchandise can be much more than a “nice to have.” It can be one of the smartest moves you make, if you know what you’re looking for. How are you measuring the real impact of your brand merch? Are you tracking, or just hoping it sticks?

Starting with your client’s vision… Designing a standout trade show booth goes beyond just aesthetics—it’s about building a strategic experience. And the foundation for that strategy? A deep understanding of your client’s goals. Here’s how to get started: 💡 Know Their Goals: Whether it’s boosting brand awareness, generating leads, or launching a new product, every design decision should support what your client aims to achieve. 👥 Understand Their Audience: Who are they trying to engage? The messaging, layout, and interactive elements of the booth should all speak directly to their target demographic. 🎨 Reflect Their Brand: From colors to messaging, the booth needs to be an extension of your client’s brand. Every detail should reinforce who they are and what they stand for. 🔧 Consider Their Challenges: Whether it’s limited space, budget constraints, or other hurdles, addressing these head-on ensures that you create a solution that delivers impact without compromise. 🤝 Collaborate for Success: Stay in sync with your client through open communication. Regular check-ins keep the design aligned with their evolving needs and vision. When you truly understand your client’s objectives, you’re not just creating a booth—you’re building a tool that drives real results. #TradeShowDesign #EventMarketing #ClientFirst #BrandStrategy #ExhibitionDesign #ResultsDriven