I met a number of interesting ‘new’ folks at this year’s SISO in Dallas, and many of the conversations I had will provide much of the material for my upcoming articles. One of those people was Justin Childs, who is the Marketing Manager for Food and Floral Events at Diversified Communications. Justin is responsible for the marketing for a number of successful shows, including:
- The Trade & Trends Food Show,
- The International Floriculture Expo
- Kosherfest
- Kosher Today
Since I always welcome the opportunity to learn more about how others are attracting better quantity and quality buyers to their shows, I was intrigued by the challenges that Justin and his team have been able to solve in the last year. He was happy to discuss some of the details in building a strategy that has proven to strengthen the International Floriculture Expo (IFE) (which took place this past June in Chicago) such that it remains North America’s largest B-to-B ‘floraculture’ event.
Energy and Buzz Needed and Pronto!
Justin noted that new life needed to be injected into IFE and they wanted to stretch to make it happen. Energizing this year’s attendance was no small feat. His solution was to co-locate his even with another one that served a complementary market, that of produce: the United Fresh Product Association’s United Fresh show.
Can Co-location Be a Panacea?
Now, I can hear some groans from you already. When I ‘cut my teeth’ at DCI(a conference organizer here in New England) early in my career, I learned an inconvenient truth: co-location of two events was equivalent to asking two drunks to hold each other up. Co-location was an admission that the events couldn’t stand on its own, yet that was not the case here. Both events were already vibrant, healthy events. But they needed ‘freshening’ up and co-location was envisioned as the way to do that.
Deciding to do a joint venture involves risk, of course. But when done for the right reasons, it can be a home run. They had discovered that the buyers in the United Fresh show often had similar job titles (in some case, the same titles) as those attending IFE, a powerful case for joining forces. Thus, it became evident that they could strengthen both events by joining forces to create a one event that included exhibitions of fruit, vegetables, and floral under the same roof. So a joint venture deal was closed to exploit the synergies from both parties.
The results?
The combination of two co-located events left fewer reasons for buyers to ‘sit on the fence’ about whether to attend. With the broader range of topics and exhibitors, attending the event became more of a ‘must’ than ever. It also jazzed up the exhibitors, as they could see that there was more energy and innovation supporting the marketing and programming for both events.
Justin indicated, “We were very excited to have exceeded our key buyer attendance goals. More than 250 key buyers attended this year, representing a 43% increase, year over year. We saw several new faces, including Walgreens, which is a big draw for exhibitors.”
Who were the buyers?
They included:
- 1-800-Flowers
- Ahold
- Albertson’s
- Associated Wholesale Grocers
- FTD
- Publix
- ProFlowers
- Wegmans
- Target
Compared to the prior year’s IFE, the Chicago 2015 show was larger. In addition, 94% of attendees planned to make purchases as a result of attending IFE. Finally there also seemed to be a lot more interaction between vendors and visitors, more energy and a buzz on the show floor and in the conference rooms.
What’s next?
Perhaps the biggest endorsement is the plan for the future. Next year’s IFE event will take place, together with United Fresh, at McCormick Place in Chicago on June 20-22th.
There’s nothing like innovation and good ideas to create buzz, quality attendance, and success!