Marketing your NRA Show Exhibit

Reach Out to Your Buyers at the Teachable Moment

By Lorrie Baumann

Seth Godin points out in his blog today that in this brave new digital world, what's scarce, and therefore valuable, is connection. "Who trusts you? Who wants to hear from you? Who will collaborate and support and engage with you?" he writes. "These are things that don't scale to infinity. These are precious resources."

This is why it's so important for you to tell your story far and wide at a trade show. You're not just there to talk to the people who already know you and your products and who already trust you enough to do business with you; you're also there to engage with people who never heard of you before and know nothing about you other than what they can see in a quick glance as they pass your booth in their hurry down the aisle to the people they already know. Your job is to persuade them to trust you with a share of their valuable time at the show. Time at the NRA show is, after all, another precious resource that's in scarce supply.

How do you do that? You tell them the story of why they should go out of their way to stop and see you. You arrange for your story to reach them at a teachable moment when they're not distracted by their awareness that the clock is ticking and there's so much to see that's just down the aisle from you. 

Restaurant Daily News is the show daily with the widest distribution during the NRA Show. It reaches attendees at shuttle stops outside their hotels, so that they pick it up and read it on the ride to McCormick Place. Once the shuttles are in the busway, there's very little to distract the riders, so that's a great teachable moment. When they arrive at the convention center, your message is fresh in their minds, and they've learned something about you and your new products, so they know they need to see you. They arrive at your booth ready to hear what you have to tell them. 

Your job at that point is to make sure that what you have to offer them during their visit to your booth is truly worth a share of their valuable time and that you will both get something out of the experience, even if it doesn't result in an immediate order. And as Godin writes, "Connection and leadership and trust are going to get ever more valuable. Sure, go ahead and shake your head in agreement, but when you get back to work, are you busy working in the scarce universe or trying to build a place for yourself in the new one?"

Call Restaurant Daily News today to discuss how we can help you tell your story to NRA Show attendees at the teachable moment. 520.721.1300

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An Empirical Experience in the Power of Story

By Lorrie Baumann

This afternoon on National Public Radio, I happened to hear LA Weekly food critic Jonathan Gold describing the time he spent eating in every restaurant along the length of Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. He talked about making up rules about how to approach the self-imposed year-long task, that he decided that he had to take the restaurants in order, and if he skipped one on one day, he had to go back and eat there the very next time he had a meal on Pico Blvd. Toward the end of the year, he thought about whether he could skip a hole-in-the-wall burrito stand if it served food no different from the burrito he’d eaten at a similar stand just down the block during the previous week.

Stress-Free Marketing Messages

By Lorrie Baumann

There’s research to say that if you start by making a few simple rules for yourself, you’re likely to end up with something that’s more creative than if you simply start by facing the blank page. Writers already know this. If I tell you to take 10 minutes and write a short story that includes a shoe, a key, and a character who tells a lie, you’re likely to be able to do that and you’ll have much more fun doing it than if I tell you simply to take 10 minutes and write something. Try it for yourself and see.
So start writing your next marketing message this way: Take 10 minutes and write a message that includes these three things: one main point you hope that trade show buyers will go home with after they visit your exhibit booth, one story about why your new product is better than your competitors’ and your contact information. That’s all you really have to do. Don’t struggle over it, just scribble something down in 10 minutes.
The story is easy -- Peter Guber tells us how to do that in Tell to Win. You need a hero dealing with a challenge. That’s all. So cast your end-user as the hero and tell us how she’ll use your product to solve a problem in her daily life. Or tell us how your product is going to help the noble retailer do better business.
At the end of 10 minutes, take what you have and set it aside for a while. Overnight, for preference, which is why you don’t want to wait until you’re on top of your deadline before you do this.
Then the next day, read over what you have and then THROW IT AWAY. That’s right, wad it up into a ball and toss it into a trash can. Then do a fast rewrite from scratch. You will ALWAYS find that this second version is better and comes more easily than that first version.
At the end of another 10 minutes, you’ll usually have a product that’s good enough to share around with your colleagues. Do that and see what suggestions they can offer you. Incorporate the best suggestions into your draft, and then you’re done! And you never even had to break a sweat!

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Questions to Help You Get Your Best Advertising Deal

By Lorrie Baumann

When the Restaurant Daily News staff heads for Chicago for the NRA Show, we'll be flying Southwest Airlines, an airline famous for leaving its competitors choking in the exhaust of its Boeing 737s. If you're going to emulate the airline's success as you market your show exhibit, you need to be as nimble about taking advantage of every available opportunity to meet your goals in the most cost-effective way. Do that by being ready with your questions when you're considering your ad buy in the show daily you'll count on to draw traffic to your booth.

No matter which publication you're talking to, there are a few questions you should always ask. Start with this one: Do you have a media kit that I can look at? The media kit will give you details about the publication, including its page size, rate card prices, and distribution, so that you'll know what you can expect to get for your money.

Your next question should be: Where is this publication being distributed? Even though this question should be answered by the media kit, ask it again to make sure that you understand exactly what is and isn't being promised. No publication can promise that it'll be distributed everywhere during the show, and each publisher has a distribution strategy that its representatives should be able to discuss with you.

Next ask for a look at last year's publication. Your publisher should have this available for you in a pdf format that you can either download or look at online, and it'll give you a good idea about the respect with which the publication is regarded in the industry and how your competitors are likely to be represented in it.

Once a publication has passed your initial review, there are some other questions to ask that'll help you get the most bang for your advertising dollar. Start with this one: If I jump on board with this, how far forward can you put me? Follow up with, What's the first righthand-read available? The righthand-read is the page on the right side of the magazine after it's been opened, and most readers will look at it before they turn to the lefthand page, so it's considered a slightly better position. And then ask, What editorial opportunities are available?

The earlier you talk with the publisher about your advertising, the better the answers you'll get to these questions. Don't worry, though, if you're talking to the advertising representative late in the publication's sales campaign: the positions that are still available will be limited, but you'll have a bit more leverage to negotiate for a bargain price. Just like with airline travel, we all know that the passengers in the front seats may have paid more for their tickets, but we all get to the same place at the same time.

Call Oser Communications at 520.721.1300 today to start your conversation with the Restaurant Daily News. When you take off for the show, you want to be on the jet that's going places, not left behind on the runway.

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3 Tips for Maximizing your Opportunities at NRA with Help from Restaurant Daily News

NRA is an incomparable once-a-year opportunity to meet the people who will matter to your success over the next year, saving you the time, energy and expense of countless round-the-world trips to meet all the people who gather in Chicago each May. Make sure you make the most of the opportunity to meet, not just the people you know you need to see, but also the potential partners, suppliers and customers that you don't even know are out there.

Restaurant Daily News - Your Best Advertising Deal at the NRA Show

Count on Restaurant Daily News for the best advertising deal during NRA!

Here's why:

ONLY Restaurant Daily News will be distributed in 60 locations throughout Chicago, including key hotels, shuttle stops and restaurants serving show attendees, to ensure that your message will reach your buyers where they live while they're in Chicago.

ONLY Restaurant Daily News will be distributed in hotel lobbies, along shuttle routes and in restaurants serving show attendees en route to McCormick Place, so your message can reach your buyers while they're planning their day.

ONLY Restaurant Daily News focuses on you and your products. While the NRA Show Daily is telling attendees what the keynote speaker had to say, Restaurant Daily News is telling attendees about the exciting products on the show floor.

ONLY Restaurant Daily News publishes FOUR daily issues during NRA to reach your buyers FIRST, last, and every day during the show!

Restaurant Daily News is published in full tabloid size. Our 11”x14” page is almost 25% larger than a Dealerscope page.

Restaurant Daily News is the oldest continuously published daily at NRA. For more than 35 years, Restaurant Daily News advertisers have counted on RDN to be at their hotels every morning BEFORE buyers have left for the show.

ONLY Restaurant Daily News is your BEST ADVERTISING BUY during the show. Compare rate cards and see for yourself that Restaurant Daily News offers more for your money during NRA!

Call 520.721.1300 today to reserve your space while great positions are still available!

  Download printable flyer here NRA1

Restaurant Daily News is a publication of Oser Communications Group, an independent publishing company not affiliated with the National Restaurant Association. It is not an official publication of the NRA show.

Restaurant Daily News Exposes Hot New Products at the NRA Show!

EXPOSED! Only on Restaurant Daily News, see how major Restaurant merchandisers are conspiring to overwhelm the international marketplace with products that are:

Hot!    Innovative!    Desirable!

WATCH as Restaurant Daily News exposes these hot new products through FOUR daily issues during NRA to be distributed in 60 locations throughout Chicago, including key hotels, shuttle stops and restaurants serving show attendees, to ensure that your message will reach your buyers where they live while they're in Chicago. No other publication does more to take your message outside convention center walls.

Restaurant Daily News, Your Best Buy During the NRA Show

Seen First, Last and Everywhere during NRA, Restaurant Daily News is your best advertising vehicle!

ONLY Restaurant Daily News, the oldest continuously published daily at NRA, is your BEST ADVERTISING BUY during the show. Compare rate cards and see for yourself that Restaurant Daily News offers more for your money during NRA!

ONLY Restaurant Daily News publishes FOUR, count 'em, FOUR, daily issues during NRA! Your ad runs in all four issues for one low price.

Does Print Still Work?

By Lorrie Baumann

Let me take off my shoes and wade into some deep water here. There’s a lot of evidence out there that marketers are losing faith in print as an effective advertising vehicle, so naturally, as a publishing company, this is something that we think about a lot. If we had any evidence that an online publication was an effective vehicle for a trade show daily, we could abandon our very expensive printing and shipping of paper publications, deliver the content online, drop our advertising rates and still make a profit doing what we love to do best. We’d all be happy.

The problem is that despite the documented evidence that paper publications might be less effective as advertising vehicles in other contexts, we see a lot of evidence that paper still works for the show daily. Attendees still take them when we hand them out, and our advertisers still see more traffic at their booths than nonadvertisers do.

Capture the Attention of Your Audience at the NRA Show

When you exhibit at a trade show, you’re setting up a special place to which you hope to draw an audience for a performance in which you will create an engaging and memorable experience for them. It’s theater.

Every Leader is an Artist by Michael O’Malley and William F. Baker contains a useful discussion on how to think about stagecraft within a business context. They point out that putting on a successful performance requires us to think about how we’re going to capture attention to draw an audience and how to create a sense of anticipation that focuses their attention on what we think is important for them to notice and remember as well as how to create an experience on stage that will maintain that focus through the performance.