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HomeTrend Forecast
November 2008
A "Must Attend" Event for Any Housewares Manufacturer Introducing New Products in 2009
IHA's Show Preview is a tabletop exhibition that allows you a one-on-one opportunity to preview your new products for 2008 to the consumer and trade news media. Media attendees at past Preview Events have included Time Magazine, Good Housekeeping, The Wall Street Journal, Good Morning America, Boston Herald, Newsday, Woman's Day, O at Home, Better Homes & Gardens, Home Magazine, Bride’s, Modern Bride, Parade, Metropolitan Home, New York Magazine, Real Simple, InStyle, Gourmet and Philadelphia Inquirer.
Tuesday, January 8
11:30 a.m – 4:00 p.m.
Hilton New York
1335 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10019
The news media are looking for NEW products, not old products in new colors or sizes. The Preview is limited to 75 exhibitors, with only a few tables left, so sign up today!
How Effective a "Silent Salesperson" Is Your Trade Show Booth?
Every year when I walk the aisles of the International Home + Housewares Show, I am shocked by how poorly so many exhibitors’ booths communicate to the people who are attending the trade show.
Cookware manufacturers are among the worst of the offenders. Walk the aisles of the South Hall where all the cookware manufacturers’ booths are and your eyes will glaze over from the sameness. Many cookware booths have absolutely no signage except for brand names and maybe a couple of beauty shots of some of the products. Few of the manufacturers have any signage that communicates the brand’s positioning or differentiates the brand from all the other cookware brands that are also exhibiting at the show. Few of the manufacturers even have signage that communicates at a glance what new products the company is introducing at the show.
In contrast, take a company like Bissell. Stand in the aisle by the Bissell booth and within seconds you will know what new products Bissell is introducing at the show and what the key selling points are for each new product. You will have learned about Bissell’s “closed loop manufacturing process” … all before you ever step foot in the booth and without ever having talked to anyone in the booth. Bissell’s booth is a very effective silent salesperson for the company. I can’t think of one cookware company whose booth was anywhere near as effective at communicating their positioning, their points of differentiation, their new product offerings, their brand as Bissell is.
It’s like the cookware exhibitors (and exhibitors in many other product categories) are saying to the thousands of people who walk past their booth over the course of the three days of the show, “it’s on a need-to-know basis and you don’t need to know.” Sure, the retailers who are already buying from them know all about the brand. After all, they get the personal tour. They have someone who takes them around to the various new items and tells them about the selling points of each new product. But what about the buyers from other retailers who aren’t current customers who are walking by the booth?
Wouldn’t it make sense to have signage that sells them on the brand and highlights the new products? What about all the other people who walk by the booth? Whether they are trade guests, media, buyers, or exhibitors, they are also consumers of housewares products. Why not have signage in your booth that does the same thing that your packaging and point-of-purchase displays are supposed to do in the retail store -- be your silent salespeople?
A Web Site that Every Marketer Should Bookmark and Visit Regularly!
As marketers, it is critical for us to stay current on the topic of marketing, if only to help us keep up-to-speed on the strange -- and every-changing -- new world of Internet, e-mail, mobile and other digital forms of advertising and marketing. I highly recommend MarketingProfs.com.
Founded in January 2001, MarketingProfs specializes in providing strategic and tactical marketing know-how for marketing and business professionals in organizations worldwide through a full range of online media. With over 321,000 members and 300 contributors, MarketingProfs provides members with practical marketing tools and information in many forms, including articles, online seminars, case studies, workshops, templates, benchmark survey reports, buyer’s guides and thought-leader panel discussions. Updated daily, the content enables professionals to stay current and effective.
- MarketingProfs Today publishes seven articles each week drawing from a pool of more than 300 experts from across all marketing fields, offering readers a wide range of topics, points of view, and insights.
- Get to the Point: Newsletter Series provides bite-sized advice and tactics written by our stable of hand-picked experts. These newsletters focus on topics such as Small Business, Marketing Inspiration, Customer Behavior, Email and Direct Marketing, B2B Marketing, and more.
- MarketingProfs’s online seminars deliver high-quality learning once or twice a week straight to your desktop, via web conference technology. Leading experts, hand-picked by MarketingProfs, lead sessions on the complete range of marketing topics. Recordings of the seminars and full-text transcripts are available online following a seminar to accommodate on-demand viewing.
- MarketingProfs publishes in depth case studies weekly in MarketingProfs Today. Case studies delve behind the scenes at firms big and small and reveal how a specific marketing challenge or issue was handled, and what happened as a result
- Know-How Exchange is a free forum for marketing peers from around the world, with more than 25,500 questions and 168,900 answers posted. KHE members share information and answers to their most vexing marketing problems. Think of it as a virtual gathering spot where like-minded professionals get together for advice and camaraderie.
MarketingProfs Basic members receive a subscription to the weekly newsletter, MarketingProfs Today, as well as membership in the Know-How Exchange Forum. Premium members receive access to case studies, templates, guides, research, and special reports, as well as exclusive articles. Click here to sign up.
Do You Have a New Product that Is Not Performing As Well As You Expected?
Is there is a product that your company brought to market in the past couple of years that is not doing as well as you expected it would? Do you know why it did not do as well as you thought it would?
If you want to find out why the product did not do well, you should think about doing a New Product Diagnostic Test. You'll get invaluable diagnostics that may enable you to increase the sales of this product plus learning that you can apply to future new product development.
Here's how the New Product Diagnostic Test works: You send out samples of your underperforming product to select members of my proprietary HomeTrend Influentials Panel (HIP). What you get in return is valuable feedback from these HIPsters about what they think of the packaging, product, and instruction manual.
E-mail me for more information on the New Product Diagnostic Test.
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