Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope® Anti-Booth

Reimagine the tradeshow experience

Challenge:
Annually, the AIA Convention is the host to hundreds of building product manufacturers, promoting their products and services. Close to 30,000 attendees navigate a hectic tradeshow floor for two full days. Standing out in this environment is not easy to do.
360º Services:
  • Experiential Design
  • Pre-Show Promotion
  • Email Marketing
  • Messaging
  • Interactive Sketch Wall
  • Promotion
  • Social Media
  • Post-Show Follow-up

Our Approach

We called it the “anti-booth”. After research and discovery, mystery shopping and informal meetings with show attendees, Ganton learned not what architects liked about the AIA Convention, but what they didn’t like.

A completely disruptive approach began to emerge. What if we didn’t show product at all? What if we were there to support our loyal architects and designers with an incredible experience and a way to say thank you?

It worked—almost too well.


Results

  • By 9:35 am (the show doors opened at 9:30 am) it was elbow to elbow—standing room only in the booth.
  • Best booth of AIA Convention—an unprecedented two years in a row.
  • More quality leads by noon on the first day, compared with the entire show the year before.
The sketch wall was genius—I created two sketches in over two hours surrounded by beautiful design.
Associate Architect

Gensler