Smart experience marketers know that an experience marketing environment is more than just a space, it’s a superb marketing tool that is multi-faceted and complex in it’s potential application. When leveraged properly, it can yield an amazing return of investment.

Accordingly, these programs must be designed using the brands they seek to promote as the basis for their very architecture. Brandscaping is the art of designing from the inside out, starting with the brand message and ending with the physical manifestation of the brand message.

More often than not most conventional exhibit designers employ a strategy which is the reverse of this process. In this common scenario the design process unfortunately becomes a mere superficial exercise of designing towards the individual aesthetic taste of the client, of the exhibit designer or of simply executing a “wish list” of desired elements.

Commonly many exhibit designers aren’t students of integrated marketing, they are simply environmental designers. Smart experience marketers utilize a design team that operate as students of integrated marketing so that the entire design process is a holistic one that begins with the end in mind.

Strategic planning, market research, focus on the target and the program goals are the basis from which our Brandscaped environments arise. In the new marketing climate with it’s fractured audiences and the timely death of mass media the implementation of integrated marketing strategies is paramount to the success of any experience marketing program.

Brandscaping is the new solution to the complex problems which currently face marketers today - request a Fusion ROI program evaluation today.

In the current economic climate, Trade Show attendance, although now back on the rise, is not what it once was. With downsizing, cost-cutting and economic calamity looming on the horizon for many companies reducing their profile at industry events and Trade Shows have become a way for these companies to quickly trim budgets. The initial reeling of Show Organizers and Contractors in the face of such a reality has given way in many instances to a silver lining of sorts: Increased Focus, Singleness of Purpose and an Environment at these events which is more Target-Rich than ever before.

After every conference I try to ask my clients the million-dollar question: “Did you have a good show?”. More often than not these days I hear that, although attendance was down from previous years, the contacts that were made at these events were more qualified and less time was wasted on unqualified leads.

The main reason for this reality is simple: Companies need to (now more than ever) both exhibit at and attend industry events and Trade Shows but their strategies have on large part shifted to enlisting only the most qualified decision-makers to represent them at these events. This means more face-time with decision-makers / quality leads and less face-time with the people who are just at the show to have a good time.

- Brad Lott

In a recent post on Harvard Business Online, Writer Scott Anthony  uses the term “Great Disruption” to describe the current economic situation. He contrasts the current economy against the Great Depression of the 1930s and warns against falling back on the same strategies Fortune 500 companies used to navigate the economic challenges back then.

He reasons that the current economic situation is a market condition VS. an economic crisis and argues that the highly competitive climate that exists in these times calls for an entirely new set of strategies for dealing with it. The days of leveraging existing business and market share are long gone; in the current market competitive edge often disappears within a few years. Smart companies must constantly be searching for new business in innovative ways in order to retain market share. He quotes Former Intel Chairman Andy Grove when a decade ago he anticipated the current situation when he said “Only the paranoid survive”.

These days it seems that the main strategy is still to fall back on the old threadbare strategies of cost-cutting while focusing on core business. Scott argues “The Great Disruption Simply won’t allow it”. He goes on to suggest some strategies for navigating the “Great Disruption” including finding ways to innovate and explore new avenues for creating new growth businesses.

It appears that the days of retrenching in a tough economic climate are long gone. Smart companies need to not only focus on core business but should also continue to aggressively go after new business by creating and implementing smart marketing programs while embracing new media at the same time. Coupling existing programs with new avenues of reaching consumers is what our Fusion ROI products are all about. By leveraging live communications experiences (trade show or live promotions) and following up with residual marketing activities aggressive marketers will not only survive the “Great Disruption” but will find themselves on the other side with more market share and an elevated brand profile.