For Atomicdust, Drawing Attention at a Tradeshow is Elementary
If you’ve ever been to a trade show, you know that product demonstrations are a dime a dozen. So when our client, Elsevier MEDai called us to build traffic to their booth for previews of their new product, MEDai Navigator®, we knew we needed to do something different.
One small catch – the show (the American Health Insurance Plans Institute 2012) was just two and a half weeks away. Oh yeah, and we had to do it all without the help of extensive new booth graphics: we only had a small table in a small booth to tell our story.
We decided the best way to tackle these challenges was to use talent on the floor to draw traffic to the booth, but of course that was only half the battle. We needed to put the actors in a role that directly reflected the function of MEDai Navigator®.
So we dug deeper. We riffed on the name and played with aviator themes, but then went even further to discover the real function of the software, and here’s what we found: MEDai Navigator® acts like a detective for healthcare organizations, helping them comb through a cascade of data to uncover hidden clues and messages that drive smart decisions about care.
Hidden messages. Clues. A super sleuth. Sound like any famous characters? Indeed. Sherlock Holmes is a highly observant detective who makes powerful, enlightening deductions based on details available to all. Bingo.
We dispatched a team of houndstooth-clad super sleuths on the show floor to interact with attendees and give them mysterious cards imprinted with cryptic messages like, “See the big picture. Take this to booth #612.” At the booth, invisible ink on the cards glowed under a blacklight, congratulating visitors on solving the mystery and inviting them to do the same for their data.
The cards would reveal hidden messages when placed inside the 'mystery box'.
The concept was the talk of the show, drawing more than 100 visitors (and even a few competitors) to the booth to decode the messages and talk with MEDai further about the new product.
Here’s what our client had to say about the project.
“I want to thank you both and let you know that Elsevier/MEDai had a great show this year. The curiosity of not knowing what the other side of the card being handed out by our detectives and can only be decoded at our booth, gave us a steady traffic stream. We had over 100 people at our booth. I even had competitors that came over to me and said they loved our idea and congratulated me on the steady traffic.”
Lisa Roman, Elsevier.
Rich Heend is a senior copywriter for Atomicdust, helping us develop engaging websites, print materials and, as you can see, the occasional blog post. Basically, he reads and rights writes for us. (Oh, and he edits too.)
