The Demise Of The Trade Show?

This week, Apple announced that 2009 would be the last year that it would participate in the annual MacWorld conference, and that Steve Jobs would not deliver the keynote address. While there has been much speculation as to the real reason Jobs won’t be on hand in January, the official word from Apple is that it has cheaper and easier ways to reach consumers than the annual trade show, such as its website and network of Apple stores.

Trade shows: another casualty of Web 2.0. It makes sense - in this age of blogs, Twitter, video press releases, webchats, and online product reveals, what role do these annual gatherings play? There really isn’t a need for in-person announcements when bloggers spread the word widely and instantaneously armed only with a video clip. Questions can be answered online via webchats or in comments fields.

Traditionally, trade shows also provided opportunities for networking among industry colleagues. Facebook and LinkedIn are starting to fill this role - for free. These sites also let fans come together online to share thoughts and build affinity for their favorite products. And corporate blogs put faces on companies and provide opportunities for dialogue and interaction with consumers and industry followers.

So why bother attending these shows anymore? Especially in a tight economy, I wouldn’t be surprised to see attendance way down in 2009 at the big shows. I am not alone either - The Pervasive Datacenter, Discrete Cosine and Mark Evans all had a similar reaction to Steve Jobs’ announcement. In fact, I can’t seem to find anyone arguing in support of trade shows - even Convention Insider seems resigned to the fate of its livelihood.

What should trade show organizers do to transform their industry and survive Web 2.0?

Posted by Gayle Weiswasser on December 19, 2008 at 3:05 PM
in Internet, Marketing, Social Media

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COMMENTS (2)

As the blogger for Convention Insider I wanted to first thank you for the link. I also wanted to say I am not resigned to conventions dying completely, I think that at this point they need to embrace some different ways of doing business. In fact I think they need to embrace some of today’s web 2.0 ideas. There is nothing like a face to face meeting with your customer. I just recently spoke at IAEE and discussed some ideas about how to make a trade show and convention better using some of the web 2.0 technologies. This is what needs to happen in my opinion.

Posted by: Jim Turner | December 19, 2008 at 11:54 PM

Thanks for the comment, Jim - would love to hear more about what you discussed.

Posted by: Gayle | December 22, 2008 at 1:21 PM

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