We’re Building a Trade Show Booth… and We Don’t Love It (Yet)
Trade show season is coming, and there’s a default mode most of us fall into.
You book the booth. You print a backdrop. You bring some samples. You throw a bowl of pens on the table and hope the right people stop long enough to understand what you do.
That approach isn’t wrong, it’s just rarely memorable.
For the Lacombe and District Chamber of Commerce Trade Show, we felt like we wanted more than a display. We wanted an experience. Something that lets people feel what Strand360 actually does, without a five-minute explanation.
And if I’m honest, we’re still not totally satisfied, but the process has been useful enough that I think it’s worth sharing because most businesses are in the same spot. You know you should “do something” for trade show season, but you’re not sure what’s actually worth doing.
The difficulty of finding something fitting
As we started thinking about the booth we wanted to put together, we immediately started to think about the décor.
- What kinds of banners?
- What did we want as a backdrop?
- Are there products we should display?
All good questions, but it felt like we needed to really answer a deeper question. How do we get people to experience what we do at Strand?
The products we create are designed to help businesses present a certain kind of image to the world. It helps to take their brand into the real world and let people touch it.
That’s what we mean when we say that Strand is Where Branding Gets Physical. Your brand isn’t just what you post online. It also includes what people see in real life: on roads, on buildings, at the front door, and on the stuff they take home.
So, I started to wonder if there was a way for us to help people experience the way we build a physical brand presence for others?
Some options we’ve considered, (that we’re not really excited about, tbh)
The first ideas were decent, but they weren’t us.
1) A “durability demo” idea
Scratch tests. UV-fade comparisons. Adhesion samples.
It’s fun, and it proves quality, but something felt off. It can slide into “look how tough our laminate is” which isn’t the core of who we are. Being Built for the Real World isn’t just about surviving weather. It’s about marketing that lives in the physical world, where trust actually gets decided.
2) The “trust wall” idea
Two versions of the same signage: one messy and cheap, one clean and confident. People vote on which they’d trust.
This is closer, because it shows how people actually choose, but it still felt like we were trying to win an argument. And besides, everyone knows which one should win. When it comes down to it, no one wants to look messy we just want to get by with “good enough”. What’s good enough is where things get tricky, and where your real decisions lie.
3) The “build your badge” idea
Let people design a sticker or patch and take it home.
Interactive and memorable, but it didn’t naturally communicate that we don’t just make swag. We help build real-world brand experiences that create trust.
None of these really seem to fit, so we’re still thinking things through. We’ve narrowed it down to a couple options, but we’re not showing them yet. We want the booth to speak for itself on the day.
Turns out this way of thinking is WWAAAYYY harder
It is relatively easy to think about the kinds of banners, signs, or displays we might want to create. It is much more difficult to try and create an experience that feels like the company.
Really what you want people to do is engage in some way. Have them notice something that connects with or intrigues them, have them engage in some way with that thing, then have them leave with something memorable.
This is really what a business tries to do with every interaction, and a trade show booth should be no different.
Why I’m telling you this now
Because trade show season rewards the businesses who start earlier than feels necessary. We can help with any piece of décor you may need for any show, but we really would love to help with the deeper question as well.
Design takes time. Approvals take time. Production takes time. And last-minute trade show rush jobs are where good brands accidentally send cheap signals.
Even if you don’t know exactly what your booth should be yet, you can start with the same question we’re wrestling with: How do people decide whether they trust you? How can you fit that in your booth?
If you can answer that, your booth stops being “a table with stuff on it” and starts being a real-world demonstration of your business.
If you’re coming to the Lacombe and District Chamber Trade Show, swing by and see what we come up with.