Hybrid exhibition stand - case study

In 2019, we acquired the internationally active veterinary pharmaceutical company Veyx-Pharma GmbH as a new customer. WWM GmbH & Co. GmbH initially impressed us with a comprehensive trade fair stand concept: the RocketExpo business unit realizes the individual trade fair stand projects and ExpoCloud takes over the process-controlled small stands for congresses.

Unfortunately, the coronavirus has also thrown a spanner in the works for the veterinary pharmaceuticals industry. Like everywhere else, trade fairs and congresses were canceled and Veyx-Pharma also had to rethink its marketing concept. In my blog, I would like to use the example of Veyx-Pharma's hybrid trade fair stand to report on the challenges and opportunities of digital transformation in marketing.

Summary:

• Corporate identity and corporate design - the real trade fair appearance
• Integration of digital and virtual formats

Corporate identity and corporate design - the real trade fair appearance

With its products, Veyx-Pharma ensures the preservation of animal health. Continuous research and development of the products and a close network with universities and research institutes guarantee sustainable and long-term quality standards. The identity of the company is based on its history:

As a family-run medium-sized company, the company identifies with a very serious value culture of all stakeholders that is geared towards long-term partnership. This is also reflected in the corporate design. The website is very clear and well-structured, the color scheme is rather discreet and naturally in line with the corporate design and the company colors. The content is focused on the essentials. Only in the logo does Veyx-Pharma allow itself a very striking peculiarity: instead of a slogan, animals stand together in an unusual cartoon style “cloud-like”.

Veyx-Pharma GmbH's most important marketing tool is classic face-to-face marketing. The veterinary pharmaceutical industry meets regularly at various congresses, trade fairs and information events. These events are traditionally organized “analog”. It is the healthy mix of congress event, industry meeting, exhibition and entertainment that makes these veterinary medicine events so attractive for all stakeholders.

The Veyx-Pharma stand has two unique selling points in the industry:

• Firstly, the regionally famous sausages, which you can smell as soon as you approach the stand and are incredibly tasty.
• Secondly, the stand uses an unusual cartoon style in its wall and graphic design. Green meadow, beer tent-like seating areas, the wall design in a toy-like, cartoon-like comic atmosphere. You have the feeling of being in a cartoon in the middle of the Veyx-Pharma product world.

In one of our case studies you can see the Veyx-Pharma stand at the 2020 Veterinary Congress.

Integration of digital and virtual formats

Real trade fair stands have long been flanked by digital features. This automatically turns them into a hybrid exhibition stand. I would like to mention just two of the most important ones here, which are used directly on the exhibition stand and which would not be possible without the real exhibition stand.

• Digital exhibition stand: An extension of the graphic performance is already - and will increasingly be in the future - the use of moving LED video walls.
• Digital tracking of visitor flows at the exhibition stand allows conclusions to be drawn about visitor behavior. Visitor measurement can be used to draw analyses that have a direct influence on marketing decisions.

Digitalization in marketing has taken a huge step forward, particularly as a result of the cancellation of real trade fairs due to the coronavirus:

• Trade fair organizers are moving their trade fairs into the virtual space and virtual trade fairs are being held. So far, however, feedback on these virtual formats has been muted. There is a lack of the “entertainment” factors that make such events attractive in the first place.
• The marketing departments of advertising companies are looking for ways to tell their “story” virtually. The keyword here is “content and inbound marketing”. Marketing tells stories and distributes the content in business networks (e.g. LinkedIn, Xing, etc.).

Our client Veyx-Pharma finally ordered a virtual trade fair stand from us with its marketing mix. We used the real trade fair stand as a template and thus created a hybrid trade fair stand. The virtual trade fair stand allows visitors to the Veyx website to experience the company in a different and unusual way:

By moving the mouse, visitors can move freely around the stand. Info points, which are placed in prominent areas of the stand, refer to the most important links to content. If you move the mouse over one of these info points, the name of the linked content appears. This can be:

• Forms
• videos
• whitepapers
• or the link to your own website

This encourages visitors to become interactive. The movements of visitors to the stand can be tracked for this purpose. Analyses help to adapt the content in such a way that the website visitor rate increases or more leads are generated. The hybrid exhibition stand can also be advertised on social media channels to attract attention.

The cloned design of the physical trade fair stand also makes it easier for visitors to find their way around and gives them a sense of security, as they are not confronted with anything completely new. Another interesting factor for visitors is that a hybrid exhibition stand gives them a “look behind the scenes”, so to speak, as they can move freely around the stand and view it from all sides.