The show must go on

If Comdex can fall, what is the future of smaller shows? Are we moving towards the end of the trade show era? Probably not, says SHIPRA ARORA, but the trend is towards focused shows for niche audiences

EVEN as speculation is rife over what caused Comdex, one of the biggest IT trade shows, to shut its doors before it opened this year, the industry has already started questioning the viability and relevance of IT trade shows. After the cancellation of Comdex Fall 2004 due to lack of interest on the part of bigwigs from the IT industry, it is not only Las Vegas that’s going to be missing all the glitz and glamour as this development may end up taking some shine off other IT shows across the world. The reason specifically attributed to the cancellation of Comdex Fall 2004 was lack of interest from both exhibitors and attendees. The decreasing number of participants and lack of interest on part of exhibitors ensured that the show could not go on.

Though India has already witnessed some of its bigger shows such as India Internet World and the Indian edition of Comdex making an exit, and the survivors like Bangalore IT.com suffering from dwindling participation, it isn’t ready to completely write off IT trade shows though the market reality that the cancellation of Comdex foretells looms large. Bigger events trying to be everything to everyone are giving way to smaller events catering to a focussed audience. According to Vinnie Mehta, director, MAIT, “With the turmoil in the last couple of years, and cost structures getting lean and mean, we find that Indian companies are not enthused about large trade shows.”

Way down in Vegas

For some, the cancellation of Comdex isn’t surprising as the event was on its way down for a couple of years now. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has been quoted as estimating that the show’s economic impact shrunk to $168 million in 2001 and was down to $69 million last year. It further estimates that in 2004 Comdex would have brought in 50,000 attendees and $70 million in non-gaming revenue. This would have been a poor showing compared to the 1,25,000 attendees it attracted in 2003. Sanjeev Keskar, country manager, AMD Far East (India), despite his belief that these trade shows are good opportunities for information dissemination and partnership building, admits that he did not find the response up to expectation when he attended the show in Las Vegas last year.

IBM, Dell, Intel and Sony are some of the high-profile losses that Comdex suffered over the last few years. The lack of broad-based support from leading technology companies for Comdex is touted as one of the reasons for its withdrawal. Such trade shows are getting lower turnouts year after year, and one of the reasons for this is the defocusing of such events. People want to see niche technologies, but these shows, to add more revenue, are perpetually including diverse companies ranging from pure-play telecom to hard-core IT companies—and attendees get lost somewhere in the whole drama.

Meanwhile in India...

The Indian experience, though at a much smaller scale, aligns. BangaloreIT.com 2003 reportedly attracted 285 participants as compared to the 375 that set up kiosks in 2000. Even though the 2003 show was able to recover from the previous year’s low of 264 participants, the number of visitors went down from around two lakh in 2002 to one-and-half lakh in 2003. The number of business visitors also dipped from 50,000 to 40,000 during the same period. As for Gitex Hyderabad, it never got enough participants. The show attracted just 70 and 80 exhibitors in 2003 and 2004 respectively. Trade shows like Convergence are still putting up a brave front against the low influx of exhibitors. Supercom, primarily a telecom trade show, is also not getting a very enthusiastic response from Indian and foreign exhibitors. According to Keskar, one of the key reasons for declining participation in these IT exhibitions is the multiplicity of similar events which has a negative impact on the quality of the audience and results in diminished value for marketers.

Small is beautiful

With the big ship sinking, the imposing question mark on the business viability of trade shows is going to be posed even more frantically by India Inc. According to Mehta, India is a very price-sensitive economy as compared to the US, so the business viability and relevance of trade shows is bound to be analysed even more closely. Moreover, companies are becoming more cautious about marketing and advertising spends. According to Sandeep Mehrotra, channel account manager, Adobe India, “Companies are now more concerned about delivering value to shareholders, so they are bound to question what use they are going to find in a show.”

These trade shows are an ideal platform for dissemination of information about the latest technologies and creation of awareness in a larger audience at one shot. But for the past couple of years the industry is showing a negative reaction. Mehta says that companies are increasingly facing the apprehension of getting lost in a big event. “The number of eyeballs that an exhibitor is likely to get at a smaller event is significantly higher,” he opines.

Rifle, not shotgun

This realisation is going to lead to the emergence of specialised events and shows focusing on a specific audience like the government, SMEs or a particular vertical. Criticism is being heaped on larger events with respect to their tendency of getting de-focused. With smaller events, an expert argues, one is sure to meet a serious and interested audience and business partners. Adobe too believes in participating in shows which are very specific and relevant to its business rather than trade shows in general. The company participates in specialised shows such as Anigraph (an animation and video industry tradeshow) and IFRA. According to experts, the trend in the future is also going to be towards shows and events that focus on smaller B&C-class cities rather than shows with a national reach.

Hence, the industry will continue to look at trade shows as a good platform for networking, information dissemination, branding and lead generation, though with a more focused approach. “We will continue to participate in select industry events that give us a platform to create awareness about our products and technologies by way of exhibition or speaking opportunities addressing the right audiences,” explains Keskar.

One trend that’s creeping in is that of road shows across continents, countries and cities. It’s easier to take the product to the customer than to ask the customer to come to the product. This shift has affected trade shows adversely. Where these shows were marked by announcements of new products and technologies, now the same announcements are made exclusively, bypassing the trade shows and resulting in the shows losing their edge.

The cancellation of Comdex does not suggest that trade shows will cease to exist. But their shape, size, periodicity, duration and nature might change—if trade show organisers take a lesson from what happened to Comdex Fall 2004.

shipra@expresscomputeronline.com