My honest impressions after being at ISPO
Being in a place like ISPO is an opportunity to see what leading trends are. Modern world foundational way of thinking is based on following - which has pros and cons. Global brands like Nike, Adidas doesn't have to worry about lack of customers. Big fishes stands at ISPO were really impressive with their advertisement and commercial way of product presentation. Also big money behind their outlook was shinning all over the spot. I was amazed. At the same time I was disappointed. Big brand hence big ego! I'm talking about people who been hired for ISPO as a customer service or for entertaining. Many of those people (not everyone) were really sad and rude-looking. For some of them it was another job to do during weekend.
Cause & effect
After day one I reconsidered my plan and it was best choice: avoid big brands and stay focus on the small ones. It's not because of their products. They were pretty awesome and high range and I didn't need any confirmations. So I was visiting more and more small booths and finally found what I was looking for. I met people who run their own brands and they do everything by themselves: CEO, management, social media, sales. These people been focused not only on sale but also on interaction with a customers. Every time someone hit to their booth they had a unlimited amount of time for product overview as well as just simple chat about ISPO experience. I also meet random individuals who been very kind and positive (still outside big brands booths). We could chat about just everything even if the only common thing was English language or our presence at ISPO. Also products from small brands were totally different, more educative, more creative with some story behind. Of course big brands had their advantage in budgets and quality flowing from industrialism. It was also great to see how they deal with future challenges and a demand for new technology. Yet a way of customer services provided by big brands were pretty weird, almost saying:
"We sale so many goods we can do whatever we want. Doesn't matter you are going to visit our booth or not."
Summary.
All big brands CEO's or managers be aware of who You hire on the trade show's booth. Nowadays where Photoshop is on every corner of advertisement, people knows best what is true and what is fake. This means You cannot amaze audience with six packs, tanned skin tone, boobs and fake smiles. This is OK for the first impression. But in a long term engagement it's going to fail. I'm not saying these young and beautiful looking people are wrong or bad individuals - in fact they are really nice and kind in private! But on the booth they became ego-driven machines hired by corporation just for entertaining process. So if there is no story behind and honestly inside these people, this won't work out.
I want to apologize every individual who felt resentful by any words above. If You do so please listen to this chill/ambient music mix. Enjoy 🙂
Photo credits: http://munich.ispo.com/en/