When talking to prospective corporate clients, sometimes it’s hard to clearly illustrate the benefit of having SUM Booth at your event, since there aren’t concrete sales comparisons or other metrics to contrast in convincing manners. In reality, our core benefit is brand exposure, photo marketing and connecting your product or company with a fun experience and a unique keepsake. So how different would an event go for a company if they did or didn’t employ our services?
At FanExpo Canada, that opportunity presented itself to answer that age-old question in the closest thing to a direct comparison as we’ve ever seen, and the results speak for themselves, to say the least. First a little backstory on the event and the two booths and companies being compared.
FanExpo is basically the ComicCon of the Great White North, where fantasy and sci-fi meet comics and anime, with costumed fans meeting and greeting with their favorite stars from past and present. SUM Booth was there with Upper Deck, a trading card company, on their first venture into FanExpo, primarily because 2013 was the first year an official sports element was added.
With that being said, the sports area still played a very faint second fiddle to the core entertainment areas of FanExpo, and was segregated in an isolated hall near the celebrity autographs and photo ops. So, wait — were there sports fans there at all then? Of course, but only a small percentage attended FanExpo solely for that element.
Joining Upper Deck in the sports area was another main card producer — Panini — which was promoting it’s line of NHL cards much like it’s market rival Upper Deck. There were also a number of private vendors selling cards, jerseys, and other pieces of memorabilia, however the two core players in the sports area were clearly Upper Deck and Panini, both with large inviting footprints for guests, bold graphic panels, card displays and employees to field questions. However, Upper Deck was outfitted with one thing that Panini didn’t have — us.
With that being said, below are some images of the two booths taken within minutes of each other. Let’s see if you can notice any differences between the two. It’s kind of subtle, so you really have to get close to the screen and look hard.
So if you paid close attention, one booth is packed with guests, exposing attendees to the company and giving them a branded keepsake to take home and share with others. The other is, well, not.
Let’s be clear that this isn’t a slam on Panini at all. They are a very reputable brand that puts out a quality product, and we at SUM Booth actually know a handful of people within the company — which is why comparing the two booths was the perfect experiment. However at events such as FanExpo, the reason you travel to Toronto for 4 full days is to maximize the exposure of your brand — otherwise what’s the point of being there? Sure, the air-conditioning was nice and the low-murmurs of the crowds were soothing, but let’s be honest, these are businesses whose goals are profits through market exposure, brand recognition and a sense of a connection between the company and the clientele. If we’re keeping score on who “won” in that regard, it’s hard to ignore the images above.
The shocking thing was we weren’t even targeting the core “demographic” of the event, which was skewed hard to the entertainment side of things. However, our service and offering was so unique that people just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take home a momento from the event — whether it was the Riddler or a member of the X-Men or Pikachu or a Stanley Cup winning Dalek that later told us getting his hockey card made was one of the highlights of the entire event.
If there was ever a way to see what SUM Booth can bring to your event and your brand, this was it.
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