Trade show blues
Exhibitions go virtual as virus spreads
FRANKFURT, Germany — Fine wines and hipster gin. Hunting rifles and knives. Contemporary paintings and million-dollar sports cars. They’re all marketed at trade events that are quickly going dark across the globe due to the new coronavirus — and taking with them sales opportunities that may be difficult to make up.
Some companies are taking their shows online with virtual events they stream from their headquarters to reach customers anyway.
But marketing experts and executives warn that there is no substitute for face-to-face contact with potential clients, as exhibition companies try to total up the losses being suffered by an industry that also pumps billions into hotels, restaurants and cabdriver’s wallets.
The Geneva International Motor Show resorted to putting automakers’ product unveilings and news conferences online Tuesday after this year’s show was canceled. BMW presented its sleek i4 electric concept car at a digital news conference from Munich, while competitors Daimler and Volkswagen held their own online events.
The Geneva show was cancelled after local authorities barred gatherings of more than 1,000 people to halt the spread of the virus, which has sickened over 90,000 people globally and led to 3,100 deaths as of
Tuesday. While some car companies were already trying online presentations before the virus in an effort to expand their reach to social media, there is no real substitute to seeing a product in person or meeting people in the industry.
“It’s not just about purchases. For many products it is also about reinforcing a kind of community building,” said Gernot Gehrke, professor of management and event-industry marketing at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hanover.
Trade shows, which can bring sales long after the event, are “a point of contact in a customer journey, if you like, that aims at a stable relationship to customers, and also to people and organizations that might become customers.”
They are also big business. Exhibitors pay in advance to book space and lose their money on such last-minute cancellations caused by health concerns. The Geneva auto show was expected to generate $250 million for the wider city area. “This is a dramatic loss for everyone,” said Oliver Rihs, managing director of the Geneva show, which plans to go ahead next year.
Trade fairs are a tradition in Germany, where some 160 to 180 are held every year, reaping $16 billion from visitors and exhibitors and pumping a total of 28 billion euros into the local economy as well as providing 230,000 jobs, 100,000 of them fulltime positions.
Art Basel, the modern and contemporary art fair, moved up the debut of a new digital initiative after its Hong Kong fair was cancelled due the virus. The online viewing rooms will be live March 20-25 after two VIP preview days. The digital initiative will be open for free to galleries that had been accepted to participate in the Hong Kong fair. The rooms allow collectors to browse through thousands of works and directly contact galleries.
But online showings would be a poor option for the luxury watch industry, which is reeling from the cancellation of two major industry events, Baselworld and Watches & Wonders Geneva.
“The watch industry is a touch-and-feel industry. The only way to get a feel for these incredible luxury products is to hold them in your hands and look at them and engage in the emotion of what goes into the making of these incredible masterpieces,” said Roberta Naas, who has written several books on the watches and founded the website ATimelyPerspective.com.
Other big cancellations include the Mobile World Congress last month in Barcelona, Spain, the biggest industry show for wireless technology.
In Chicago, the International Housewares Association this week canceled its annual show set for mid-March. It was expected to draw more than 56,000 visitors and more than 47,000 nights booked in the city’s hotels.