Elevating the Exhibit Experience: Current and Future Trends

Each month, we want to bring you the latest knowledge and insights from our 61 offices around the world, uncovering how our local teams turn local projects into successful global strategies for our clients. This month: Germany.

Trade fairs are a staple in a company’s marketing mix. However, visitors are growing more and more tired of them and are looking for innovative formats in which to participate. It's up to exhibitors then to move with the times and redesign their exhibition stands to meet visitors’ expectations. 

The purpose of today’s trade fairs hasn’t changed; exhibits still have to communicate information on the product, the company and the brand. But how this communication takes place has been undergoing some significant changes. 

In the past, the focus was on the exhibited product – looking at it, touching it and testing it. Today, visitors, and especially millennials, are looking for ways to interact, get involved and be addressed in a personal and emotional way within the exhibition stand.  

So, how does the exhibition stand of the future look like? Here are the trends affecting exhibition design today and for the years to come.  

From architecture to mediatecture 

This shift in the trade fair experience has had an impact on stand design as well. The physical layout of the space, in fact, is envisioned more and more to include elements of digital communication and technology. Let’s see how it has evolved throughout the years:

1. Design to impress 

Stand design used to be all about creating spaces aimed to impress visitors for their size and boldness. The focus was all on conveying the power of the corporate brand. This way, exhibitors could catch the attention of visitors and trigger their interest. In this impressive architectural space, the challenge was to effectively embed products within the architecture itself. 

2. Design to engage 

With the rise of technology, the focus started to shift towards what was happening within the space, rather than on the space itself. The exhibition design needed to engage visitors, while at the same time informing and involving the audience with the aid of new digital solutions.  

3. Design to connect 

The design of today – and possibly of the future – is all about the experiences that the exhibition space can facilitate. The customer journey is what matters, or else, all the actions that every trade fair visitor makes from the first touchpoint to the final decision of establishing contact, seek information or purchase. Above all, designing a customer experience journey asks for a harmonious media staging of spaces, forms and information. This is where the mediatecture forms the interface between physical space and technology.  

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The importance of telling stories 

As company’s products and offerings become more complex, so does the task of showcasing them and sparking visitors’ interest.  

In this sense, storytelling can make a difference. After all, it’s easier to remember facts that have been integrated into stories. Lighting, effects, interactive elements and sounds can all play a part in providing visitors with an ideal setting to understand the exhibited product. Considering new generations’ short attention span, the stories need to be designed intuitively and be delivered as ‘snackable content’. Within five minutes, visitors should be able to understand the added value of the offering and how it can meet their needs.  

Interactivity is key 

As new technologies accustom us to high levels of personalisation, the audience’s active involvement in the story will become indispensable at trade shows. By letting visitors engage with the content of the exhibit, you trigger an emotional response that the audience will connect to their overall brand experience.  

Conventional offers to participate will increasingly be replaced by interactive multimedia scenarios, from the option to take over the steering wheel in virtual worlds to the creation of your products with a 3D printer. The audience will welcome the opportunity to step into the exhibition and experiment with the content.  

Extending reality 

Augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality are all great innovations that can foster audience engagement and interactivity at trade fairs. By merging real and virtual environments, these extended reality applications allow visitors to examine car models in detail in a virtual showroom, take a tour of the factory of the future, or go on a virtual hike through Norwegian fjord landscapes.  

Today and in the future, however, it won’t be only about immersion in a virtual world. The main focus will be the actual interactions with the virtual environment, framed as goal-driven and meaningful touchpoints with the audience. Practically, this means that visitors will have the chance to experience a product in its natural setting. By transporting them into the ‘real’ experience, extended reality can add an emotional component and change communications at trade fairs like never before. 

The latest exhibition design trends have little in common with the showcasing of products. Current and future trade fair visitors crave for a digital playground in which to have interactive, tangible experiences that are part of a bigger story. Taking the audience’s needs in consideration is paramount for trade fairs to remain relevant in the business world of the future.  

Discover how MCI Germany applied innovative solutions to exhibition design in this project for SAP.