Crafting a Memorable Marketing Message

By Lorrie Baumann

One of the benefits offered by advertising in any of the Oser Communications Group show publications is that you get the opportunity to tell your story in the publication’s editorial pages. That’s part of our philosophy that show publications should tell attendees about what’s available to them on the show floor. After all, that’s what the buyers came to see -- there’s a place for other activities during the show, but that place isn’t in the Oser Communications Group show daily.

Memorable marketing messages are simple, not dumbed down, but pared down to their core -- the one idea that you want your readers to remember even if they forget everything else you tell them. Think about John F. Kennedy’s 1961 message to Congress that the United States would put a man on the moon and bring him safely back home again before the end of the decade. Breathtaking in the magnitude of the challenge, that idea, if it had been expressed in an unclear gobbledygook, would undoubtedly have been forgotten as quickly as most of the ideas in the average presidential speech -- or even the other ideas in that particular speech.

Simple core messages help people avoid bad choices, such as the choice not to allocate a significant percentage of their time on the show floor to you and your products, by reminding them of what’s important. The clarion call of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech has certainly been an enduring reminder of Civil Rights values, and it has moved people much further than the distance across a crowded exhibit hall.

You don’t have to be Dr. King or a presidential speechwriter to compose an effective message that will bring buyers to you at a trade show. Just start by taking the time to be clear in your own mind about what you want most to get across to your audience and then write just that. Resist the temptation to dress it up with a lot of extraneous ideas. Then add your booth number at the end and send it over to us before your deadline.