Leaving Vegas as a Winner

PPAI's Expo is over--and the great "brand." experiment is over. And the verdict is--we're leaving with more than we came with, and that's not always the case in Vegas.

The Grand Experiment was a success in just about every sense of the word. The "brand." pavilion was well attended with distributors that "get it", or at least WANT to "get it", and the interactions I had with clients were more detailed and meaningful than at prior Promotional Products events.

There were fewer "drive-bys"--where I had to attempt to hit their badge with my scanner as they walked by me to get to the next mug vendor. There were fewer questions about "why are YOU here?" and more questions about "how can you help me sell Branded products?".

It was obvious that this was a different year early in the week--when I did three education sessions on how to sell incentives and work with Brands. No fewer than 40 people came to our booth during the show, told me they attended a session, and wanted to know more. IMRA gave out over 1000 copies of their Rep Directory (tying nicely to our stated position that the Rep was the distributor's best friend).

Perhaps the economic downturn has served us as a natural "filter" and eliminated the not-so-serious distributors. Maybe those that did attend wanted to learn more--to have more tools to fight the ongoing slump in the market. Regardless, it was refreshing to see distributors engaged in learning and asking how we can help them sell incentives and Brands more effectively.

Kudos to Steve Slagle, President of PPAI, and Darel Cook, Grand Poo-Bah of Expo for creating and executing this vision. Like all first efforts there were things that might have been better, but the list is short and I'm excited to see what 2010 brings.

Well done--now, let's see how much of this "greenfield" the Brands can cultivate...


Pete