EMT #44 with Anders Boulanger - Engage First: Bridging the Attention Gap in Events

On this episode of Event Marketer’s Toolbox, Chris Dunn and Dana Esposito sit down with speaker, author, and Engagify CEO, Anders Boulanger, to break down how attention becomes connection—and connection becomes real pipeline—at trade shows. 

From the “engagement gap” model to practical booth layout fixes, Anders shares how to give attendees a reason to stop, a reason to listen, and a reason to buy. Expect tactics you can use at your next show: building micro-crowds, placing aisle-view presentations, writing sharper booth messages, and training staff so the gains live in the engagement—not just the structure. 

• Engage before you educate. “It doesn’t matter what you know if people aren’t paying attention.” Anders’ magician’s background taught him that capturing attention is step one; information only lands after that. Think dopamine spikes, curiosity, and crowd dynamics. 
• Close the Engagement Gap. Attendees are overwhelmed, overbooked, and often overlooked; meanwhile many booth teams are untrained, unmotivated, or unremarkable. Your job is to remove those “uns” with real training and a welcoming presence. 
• Three bridge-stones: Stop → Listen → Buy. Create an undeniable draw to stop traffic, build meaningful interactions so people stay, and deliver a memorable message that moves them to a next step (demo, meeting, or follow-up). 
• Design to the aisle, not behind a blockade. Don’t bury the theater; avoid a reception desk blocking the “hot corner.” If you’re running internal talks, set seating where the path of least resistance keeps people watching. 
• Micro-crowds create macro-gravity. Three people is the “magic number” that turns a few onlookers into a crowd—social proof and FOMO kick in fast. 
• Right-size your activation. A compact aisle-view presentation (Anders uses an 8-lb portable stage) can outperform big footprint gimmicks and hand-offs cleanly to the demo area. 
• Budget where it moves the needle. Most spend goes to booth/build; the gains are in engagement—including staff training delivered live, virtually, or on-demand. 
• Message like a human. If a passerby can’t quickly tell who you are, what you do, and why it matters, they’ll keep walking. Keep the first read crystal clear. 

Events work when people work—when teams spark curiosity, host with intent, and deliver a message that sticks. Take one idea from this episode (hot-corner fix, aisle-view mini-stage, or a tighter first-read) and put it in play at your next show. Then share what changed.
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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & sponsors
• 4:34 Anders’ origin story & “Engage First”
• 14:24 What’s working now & cultural differences
• 16:47 The Engagement Gap explained
• 20:04 The three bridge-stones
• 24:13 Messaging & flow
• 49:45 Designing space for engagement
• 51:46 Aisle-view presentations & hand-off to demos
• 56:11 Final takeaways & staff training options

Transcript

0:00:01

(Chris Dunn)

Hey, hello, and welcome to the Event Marketers Toolbox. I am Chris Dunn with Bluehive Exhibits. Hope everybody's having a great week. I have a couple of friends with us here today. We're going to have a great conversation with our friend Anders. But before we get to him, I'm going to kick it over to my co -host, Dana Esposito. 

0:00:17

(Chris Dunn)

Hey, Dana, how's it going? 

0:00:18

(Dana Esposito)

Good. How are you doing? So, I'm Dane Esposito, I'm the EVP of Strategy at Blue Hive Exhibits, and I've been in the industry about 30 years, started off as an exhibit designer, then creative director, so a lot of creative leadership and also corporate strategy. So today, we're going to be talking to Anders. 

0:00:38

(Anders Boulanger)

Anders, could you give us a little intro so everyone knows who you are? Yeah, sure. So my name is Anders Belage. I'm founder and CEO of Engageify. And we create engagement at Trade Show Boost. We either make your events more engaging or your teams more engaging. 

0:00:52

(Anders Boulanger)

And we can talk a little bit about how I got there, maybe briefly, but that's kind of where we're at right now. And so we eat, sleep and drink trade shows. I, you know, I joke with one of my old clients where I would, we were kind of feeling run down after a trade show, you know, a lot of stuff happening. And, and And I said, I'm going to tap into that passion, like trade shows are life, you know, like just like this, like like Danny Roha from from Ted Lasso, you know, football is life, trade shows are life, you know. So I do I do enjoy the engagement, the interaction and all of that. 

0:01:24

(Anders Boulanger)

So, yeah, happy to be here. 

0:01:26

(Chris Dunn)

Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us. Before we get into the meat and potatoes of our conversation today, a couple of things. First of all, this is a live show. We're here on the toolbox. 

0:01:37

(Chris Dunn)

We're building a community of event planners, of trade show professionals, of people who do activations and other brand engagements. So hopefully, jump into the chat. Let us know what's on your mind. Any kind of thoughts that kind of pop up, let us know where you're coming in from. Good questions. We will work into our show. 

0:01:57

(Speaker 10)

And Mr. 

0:01:59

(Speaker 23)

Mr. Anders here will, you know, show his adept ability to kind of adapt on the fly. 

0:02:07

(Chris Dunn)

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 

0:02:11

(Speaker 31)

Stump the master. 

0:02:12

(Chris Dunn)

Yeah. So we have a couple sponsors that make this show possible. So blue live. Dana and I work for Blue Hive. Blue Hive is a 20 -year -old creative agency. We started in Massachusetts outside of Boston area. 

0:02:27

(Chris Dunn)

We've recently expanded within the last few years to open up our own brick and mortar footprint in Las Vegas. We are 110 people -ish. We kind of like to think that we are a right size for a lot of different types of companies, whether you're a well -funded startup or a large global enterprise. Really kind of the key point is we're really creative, our customer service is excellent, and we make sure that you don't feel like a number. Our resources are a little deeper than a boutique, but we're not the big guys either. We're in that good space right there in the middle. 

0:03:05

(Chris Dunn)

In addition to Blue Hive, we are also sponsored by the group that is helping us produce this podcast, Fist Bump is an agency. Initially, my involvement with the founder, Brandon Lee, a couple of years ago was really kind of about creating better engagement on LinkedIn and personal brand and that stuff. And it led to discussions around like, hey, Chris, you know, You guys would be a great candidate to have your own show. You get to be thought leaders. You get to bring on these great folks from your industry and have wonderful conversations. And those conversations then become content. 

0:03:39

(Chris Dunn)

So we kind of went all in. 

0:03:41

(Anders Boulanger)

This is show number 44. 

0:03:42

(Dana Esposito)

We are on Halloween Eve 2025 here. 

0:03:48

(Chris Dunn)

And we are 44 shows in, having done one every single week. So we're super excited to talk to Anders, to dive a little deeper. 

0:03:55

(Dana Esposito)

deeper. He's going to talk to us about how he got a start as a magician. And I'm going to kick it back to you, Dana, to take it away from here. 

0:04:04

(Speaker 30)

All right. 

0:04:04

(Anders Boulanger)

So we know that your latest book is called Engage First. 

0:04:09

(Dana Esposito)

We talked about that a little bit. 

0:04:11

(Anders Boulanger)

The latest book. 

0:04:13

(Anders Boulanger)

It's my only book, people. 

0:04:15

(Speaker 10)

But yeah. 

0:04:15

(Chris Dunn)

No, it's the long series. 

0:04:16

(Anders Boulanger)

It sounds better. 

0:04:17

(Anders Boulanger)

It sounds better. 

0:04:18

(Chris Dunn)

Yeah, your latest book. 

0:04:20

(Speaker 8)

My latest book. 

0:04:21

(Dana Esposito)

Well, it's not wrong. I mean, it is your latest book. Right, technically. So it's all about engagement. And of course, we always talk about that on the show hall floor or any live event. We want to be memorable. 

0:04:33

(Anders Boulanger)

We want to educate. We want people to learn things. So the word gets thrown around a lot, but like, can you talk to us a little bit from your experience, you know, what it really means to engage before you start educating or trying to sell or persuade someone that journey? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, and just to kind of, like you said, the journey, we did tease that, yeah, I'm a magician and, and I got mad, started magic when I was very young and then paid my way through university doing magic and conferences and corporate events. 

0:05:04

(Anders Boulanger)

And then I started doing trade shows and, you know, you know, I was, it was about merging the message that a company wanted with a unique form of entertainment. 

0:05:13

(Speaker 14)

So we call it infotainment. 

0:05:15

(Anders Boulanger)

Right. And so years of doing that on the trade show floor made me realize, like, you know, the only reason people stop, you know, is because I'm doing something engaging. And the only reason they stay is because yeah, they remain engaged. And that's why they receive the information. right? Like, it's, it's very hard to, like, there's so much information, so much knowledge, you know, knowledge is cheap now to write AI and Google something, whatever. 

0:05:43

(Anders Boulanger)

It's that communication, you know, that's where the power lies. Right. And so that's kind of what inspired me to write the book, Engage First, because it doesn't matter what you know, if people aren't paying attention, who cares, right? So that it's also like the, you know, was it Mark Anthony in Shakespeare's Caesar, right? You know, Friends, Romans, countrymen lend me your ears, you know, that kind of thing. 

0:06:07

(Anders Boulanger)

Like we can't do anything until we have that. So and, and it's just found it funny to me that, you know, these skills that I learned when I was young, are have a higher and better use, really, because I'm able to stop people, entertain them, we spike that dopamine, so that they see something's interesting happening. And I mean, the psychology and the safety of numbers, right, and crowds, the crowd dynamics, and, you know, it's very interesting that if you can just stop a few people, like three people's a magic number, I find, like three people watching, it becomes a crowd. You know, two people, it's like just a conversation, it doesn't really, you know, so you start getting that little bit of something happening. And then the bigger the crowd you get, the more people want to be around it, right? They feel like there's a fear of missing out. 

0:06:56

(Anders Boulanger)

And there's social proof. And there's all these things that are psychologically the safety in numbers click in. And and so you know, all of that is, is really kind of, I find it interesting, the psychology of it. But that's really what a lot of this stuff is based on. And what I talk about in the book is if we want people to be engaged with what we're doing in a trade show booth, we have to give them a reason to stop, we have to spike that dopamine. And, and a lot of times engagement, we kind of throw that term around where it's, you know, gamification, sometimes that's getting a little Overused nowadays too, but you know different things where we we throw that out, but I think engagement doesn't come from apps and technology I think it comes from people at the end of the day right and so This is a face -to -face 

0:07:45

(Anders Boulanger)

event, right, in industry. 

0:07:48

(Dana Esposito)

And as we see the generations change and people coming up, I feel like engagement skills are lacking. And that's part of the reason I wrote the book as well, is that, you know, we don't have to see a bank teller anymore. We don't have to, we can check out, you know, there's limited areas where we engage these days. And then some people just have grown up on their phones too. So it's, you know, we need to kind of not be head down and shut down, but we've got to be head up and lit up, you know, and really create moments with people. And so, you know, that's what I'm passionate about. 

0:08:25

(Dana Esposito)

Yeah, some people are really good. They're very gregarious. They're very good at engaging with somebody. Chris, you could talk to a stick. 

0:08:32

(Chris Dunn)

I mean, he's really good on the first time. 

0:08:35

(Dana Esposito)

The first time we were at a trade show together, I walked up to him. I think he thought I was going to say something bad. I don't know why, because I'm like, do you have a second? He's like, oh, I'm like, I just want to say you're like really good at like just talking to strangers like off. 

0:08:47

(Speaker 28)

Like, I'm not like I'm more introverted, but he's very gregarious, like he's like a golden retriever, really. 

0:08:55

(Anders Boulanger)

I mean, the same ability to focus as Golden Retriever. That is so true, as a squirrel. This is not an into the details guy, but he's really good at talking for you. So like that beginning of engagement or also, you know, provoking human curiosity, that type of engagement as well. You know, talk to a little bit about how you were saying some people are better than others or different generations, but talk a little bit how it's a currency within itself. Yeah. 

0:09:27

(Anders Boulanger)

Yeah. Very much so that, I mean, it's, it's again, that first engage first, it's the title of the book and it just, it comes so early because otherwise, Everything's kind of a waste of breath. That first moment, though, to that, like, I always believe you got to have some contrast to the expectation, like a pattern interrupt, right? That, for example, one of the things that I do in my infotainment presentations is I give someone a chance to win $2 ,000 at the end of my presentation. So of course, I've got a fan of cash that I'm waving around, and then I throw it down on the floor. And then I kneel down on the floor and I start talking. 

0:10:09

(Anders Boulanger)

And what happens is I just see footsteps like starting to stand around me. Right. And I'm not talking to anyone in particular at this point. And so what's happening there is, first of all, when was the last time you saw two grand lying on the floor? Right. So you go, what's going to happen just this morning? 

0:10:24

(Anders Boulanger)

As a matter of fact, there's someone kneeling on the floor, which is weird, too, at a trade show. So it's like there's some things that are just not quite there. I'm talking on a microphone. in a confident manner that something's going to happen. And so all of that is, I always think with trade shows, and Dana, I'm sure you can chime in on this too, that when you have that contrast to what is expected, sometimes there's this, I call it the what the hell is this test, where people go, what the hell is this? But then there has to be relevance, right? 

0:11:02

(Anders Boulanger)

It can't just stay, out being weird, because then it's just weird. Right. But when people finally put the two together, oh, right, they hear the message or the hook or the theme. 

0:11:16

(Chris Dunn)

That's clever. You know, that that aha moment. And it's what we call inductive learning, where they have to put it together themselves. It's not like on a silver platter, right? That little twist. People remember that more because they can't they get they put it together. 

0:11:34

(Chris Dunn)

Right. Right. So there's a lot of things in those first few moments when people happen upon a trade show booth that if you check the right boxes, you're getting them to stop, okay? And which is what a lot of people focus on is just, let's just, if we could just stop more people in the booth, right? And Chris, if it's okay right now, can I, Can we talk about engagement gap? Because this is just a good time. 

0:12:00

(Chris Dunn)

Before you do that, I just wanted to ask a couple of questions. So both Dana and I started in the mid 90s. 

0:12:07

(Dana Esposito)

And it was really kind of the norm in the earlier days of trade shows that there was a live presenter. 

0:12:13

(Anders Boulanger)

who was present, whether it be somebody with stage presence and skills who was doing a teaching moment, or if there was somebody like yourself entertaining a magician, somebody doing card tricks, whatever the case may be. 

0:12:27

(Speaker 23)

That was a thing. 

0:12:29

(Anders Boulanger)

And then with technology, really pushed a lot of that out. Everybody started leaning really heavy into big screens, monitors, and digital, and all that, which is great. But I feel like we've seen the pendulum swing you know, both ways. Have you seen, I mean, I don't know exactly from your own personal timeline, but with regards to like the demand for things like you're doing, have you seen an increased demand as of late? And then I also want to kind of just ask about, you brought up different generational expectations and so forth. So when you're talking to boomers or Gen X people who are used to this kind of stuff versus millennials, maybe Gen Z now folks, younger people on the show floor who are all about face in phone, you know, what is what was your experience? 

0:13:23

(Anders Boulanger)

Is the demand up for in person? And do you notice a difference with the different generations? I know it's a lot there, but yeah. Yeah. So in terms of demand, I found a huge demand coming out of COVID because it was, that was, that's the thing that's most recent and most top of mind for me was it was like, let's get back to in person. 

0:13:44

(Anders Boulanger)

Right. And it was like, bang, once things opened up over the, over the course of the, you know, doing trade shows mostly in Canada, but when I started going to the US to do trade shows, which are on a bigger scale than they are in Canada, that's probably the last 14, 15 years. I haven't detected much in terms of ebbs and flows in terms of that. But I do find it interesting what you talked about going to the big screens, that we're trying to engage senses. And the big screen, some of them are almost over the top, where it's blinding to that point. So having people, we do connect with people. 

0:14:29

(Anders Boulanger)

So I don't see it going away. So I kind of say steady right now. And then the generational question that you're asking, I think what we see is, yeah, I probably relate to the boomers and the Gen X more just because that's, you know, more my flavor, right, and kind of what I grew up performing for. But what we're seeing now is just a different reaction. 

0:14:54

(Speaker 23)

Like a lot of the stuff that we do, and if you study engagement, we're wired to respond to certain things. 

0:15:02

(Chris Dunn)

So it's going to work. But maybe the feedback you get from it working is going to be a little bit different, right? 

0:15:09

(Anders Boulanger)

So whether or not people are as effusive, and this, and this isn't even generational, this is like cultural, geographically, right, that you go to different places, and people are just going to react differently to, you know, how you are, right. 

0:15:23

(Anders Boulanger)

You know, in Europe, it's a lot more of a laid back kind of thing, right? In terms of booth staff, it's just way more, hey, if they want to talk to me, they'll come to me, right? They don't, they're not as proactive as as in the US, right. And so what we see sometimes is, you know, a lot of Americans are taken to European shows professionals to work because the company is used to that kind of style. And they want to, you know, go hard, if you will, you know, at the show. 

0:15:52

(Anders Boulanger)

So, so, so generationally, I think it's, I think everything's still working. It's just how it's interpreted is kind of like, you know, you just might have to preface that in your mind. And it's not the same everywhere. Right? Yeah. Right. 

0:16:08

(Anders Boulanger)

Yeah, no, great, great insight. So yes, so, so you wanted to make the leap and I totally put that little, little boulder in the way, but the engagement gap, we talked about this, you know, prior to going live here, but walk us through this kind of model or concept and how it relates. Sure, sure. So the engagement gap, I talk about it a little bit in the book, but it's, it's really developed out into something that I do a presentation on it. And if you look, on my LinkedIn feed or whatever, you'll see a whole video where I draw this up. But it's the idea that there's a gap between two different parties. 

0:16:46

(Anders Boulanger)

And it's kind of a perfect storm kind of thing happening. So on one, the attendees who are coming into the show, who are the prospects, the people as an exhibitor who you want to attract to your booth. And first of all, they're coming and they are overwhelmed. 

0:17:03

(Speaker 4)

There's a lot at the show. 

0:17:05

(Anders Boulanger)

If it's your first time to Las Vegas going to a trade show, my goodness, are you in for a shock. The sheer number of marketing messages, the lights, the big screens, everything, the smoke and the air, all of that. They're overwhelming. They also don't have a lot of time. Maybe they're doing the concurrent sessions. Maybe they've got meetings previously booked. 

0:17:29

(Anders Boulanger)

Maybe there's things pulling on them from at home, like home life, that sort of thing. So I call it overbooked, but they're busy. They're overbooked. No time. And then the last piece of that on the attendee side is that they're often overlooked too. They're overlooked because boost staff maybe are just kind of doing their own thing, you know, and let's, let's flip over to the, to the boost staff side of things, right? 

0:17:55

(Anders Boulanger)

Like in the exhibit. So you've got, um, you know, very, we, we know there's certain percentages, like only 1 % of companies train their boost staff with a third party, with a professional trainer, uh, 49 % of companies rarely or never train their boost staff. Okay. 

0:18:12

(Speaker 17)

So they're, they're untrained. 

0:18:13

(Anders Boulanger)

Um, and, just from my side of the things too, because actually at Exhibitor Live, I do a, I do a training called how to train your Bo staff. 

0:18:21

(Speaker 17)

And, and, uh, one of the things is even when they are trained, it's often the event manager, just reading a list off their phone. 

0:18:31

(Anders Boulanger)

know what I mean? It's more of a clipboard situation kind of thing, and not necessarily a training. And, and so a lot of those statistics, you kind of have to take that with a grain of salt, because it's like, is the training really, like, how do we define this, right? So they're, they're untrained. They're sometimes unmotivated. 

0:18:49

(Speaker 4)

right? 

0:18:50

(Anders Boulanger)

Meaning just they're, they're there for the show. Sometimes it's a, it's a vacation going to Vegas, that sort of thing. And then in some cases, you know, they're, you know, unremarkable in a sense. So what we want to do is we want to take away the uns on that side. So we want to make them, we want to make them trained. We want to make them motivated and we want to make them remarkable. 

0:19:07

(Anders Boulanger)

Okay. So we want to bridge this gap so the, the attendees can get over to the booth. Okay. So that's what we want to do. And so when I wanted to jump into this earlier, it's because we were talking about we got to we got to give them a reason to stop, right, you know, traffic to the booth. 

0:19:25

(Speaker 7)

And so giving them a reason to stop, we call it creating an undeniable draw. 

0:19:30

(Anders Boulanger)

So what is that thing? that makes people want to stop and take a closer look or slow down, you know, and just take it in. Okay. And, and that's really what we kind of get caught up in a lot in trade shows. You know, we got the coffee, the free t -shirts, the whatever, the free, everything's right. Massages, all of that. 

0:19:51

(Anders Boulanger)

And lots of times that, that, that whatever you're doing, it can just stop and end there. We talked about the relevance piece data before, right? The, you know, We need to bridge into what the company does at one point, and we also need to earn the right to pitch. The next bridge stone to bridge the engagement gap is giving people a reason to listen. This is the connection or the meaningful interaction side of things. If we can be very present with people, if we can give them attention, make them feel welcomed in the booth, right. 

0:20:27

(Anders Boulanger)

And the idea that your booth is your home, and you're going to be very hospitable to people who come, you know, and join you there. All of a sudden, now we're, we're trying to make that transition and creating rapport with that person so that we're elevating the trust, elevating a comfort level there. Okay. And so that's, that's the second step. So We need all three of these Bridgestones. So the first one was giving them a reason to stop, the undeniable draw. 

0:20:54

(Anders Boulanger)

We can't create connection unless they stop. They're sequential. And then the meaningful interactions, if we don't have that, well, then they stop and they go, oh, that's interesting. And then they take off. 

0:21:07

(Dana Esposito)

We never were able to connect to them. 

0:21:10

(Dana Esposito)

And then the third Bridgestone that we talk about is about giving them a reason to buy. And this is what we call a memorable message. So this is where we're really getting into, we're building off of the connection of having them stop and the meaningful interactions. And now we're kind of working on the conversion, whether that is conversion to just a meeting right, conversion to them taking a closer look or taking it back to their teams, that sort of thing. So when we have that memorable message, what are we saying that is simple, concise, you know, and Dana, you, we can talk about like, you know, booth, the message on the booth, right, and having that be so clear and have clarity. And then the other side of it, too, is how are we saying this? 

0:21:56

(Dana Esposito)

in that memorable message. And when I say, how are we saying, what is the, you know, are they seeing it? Are they hearing it? Is it on a video? Is it coming from your people? And how are those people delivering that message, right? 

0:22:10

(Dana Esposito)

Because what you say and how you say, how you say it carries a lot of weight, right? So when you get all three of those bridge stones aligned, and now those attendees can walk over that bridge into your booth and, you know, build those relationships that you can captivate and cultivate on the trade show floor. Mm -hmm. Yeah, I'm often saying to clients or even other designers, you know, you gotta remember that on the trade show floor, their peer client is competing with everyone else on the trade show floor. You know, everyone is like yelling as loud as they can be with visuals, with AV, with all sorts of things, with gimmicks, hopefully gimmicks that make sense, right? They tie back in in some way. 

0:22:51

(Dana Esposito)

So you really need to think of your exhibit, not just like you have to picture it there. You can't just while you're designing it just be looking at it naked like on a page or on the screen. You have to think about the context of everything going around. It's a little bit of a circus. It's like organized chaos, right? 

0:23:08

(Dana Esposito)

So how are you going to stand out? How are you going to stand out not just on the trade show floor, but from your specific competitors? What's your most important message? Do people at the show already know you? Do they not know you? Is there something specific you want them to know that they don't know? 

0:23:26

(Dana Esposito)

Like, in, It's very easy for a client to be like, well, I want to know this and I want to know that. And it becomes with this long laundry list. 

0:23:34

(Anders Boulanger)

It's like, that's great. But like, pretend, pretend. Like, pretend you don't know you. Pretend you don't know who you are, like who your company is. Like, what's the shortest way for someone to know who you are, what you do, and your differentiating factor? Like, why should I work with you? 

0:23:50

(Anders Boulanger)

Why should I want, why do I care? 

0:23:52

(Dana Esposito)

Like, punch them in the face with the message, right? And start with that, like, punch in the face with the structure itself and the messaging and what the interactivity is. Like, make sure, like, I tend to swear a lot just because I'm I'm a construction worker kind of girl. 

0:24:10

(Anders Boulanger)

So I don't usually say like, what the heck is going on here? I'll be in a meeting, like, ask yourself what the bleep, you know, what the, why, why, why should I stop here? Like, what is going on? Because if your client doesn't know that right from the get go, why are they going to stop? Like you said, their time is valuable and they're, they're spread thin. And I think the flow. 

0:24:32

(Anders Boulanger)

of that too, Dana, right? When you got all of these moving parts in the booth and all of these things they want and the long list you're talking about, when you're doing all of them at once, can that work? Do you want that to work? 

0:24:46

(Dana Esposito)

Is it more about here's probably where they're going to come and then we upsell their time and tension to a deeper, richer booth experience, right? Like what does that flow look like? 

0:24:55

(Anders Boulanger)

Because, you know, sometimes people just try to throw everything at the wall to see what's going on. 

0:25:00

(Anders Boulanger)

It's just too much. 

0:25:01

(Dana Esposito)

If you try to do everything, they'll see nothing. They'll hear nothing and they'll walk away learning nothing. The path of least resistance is so critical in trade shows. 

0:25:11

(Speaker 27)

The idea that you ask them to do more than one thing, it confuses them. 

0:25:16

(Anders Boulanger)

And it just won't work. 

0:25:17

(Chris Dunn)

Right. 

0:25:17

(Speaker 14)

So it's like, when we have a crowd of people around a trade show booth, and we ask qualifying questions to see hand raises to see, you know, what is the what is what do we got here? 

0:25:25

(Anders Boulanger)

That's really kind of qualified, right? 

0:25:27

(Speaker 26)

We're going to just ask them to like, those people just raise your hand, you're going to go over and talk to Talk to Lori over there, she's got a special gift for you, and we're gonna show you what's next. 

0:25:36

(Anders Boulanger)

And then so that's all we wanna do with that, right? Don't say, go check out this, go check out this, go check out, you know, it's just - It's too much. 

0:25:42

(Dana Esposito)

Yeah, just ask them to do one thing. 

0:25:44

(Anders Boulanger)

Yeah, like hit them over the head, like hit them over the head. 

0:25:47

(Dana Esposito)

You know, I was also really excited. 

0:25:49

(Speaker 10)

I know. 

0:25:51

(Anders Boulanger)

You might want to seek therapy, Dana. Well, I'm a small person, so I tend to be violent to, you know, take up some space. But Anders, I was very excited because a second ago I heard you say, aboot. So I finally heard, like, some Canadian accent. It was awesome. Sometimes I try to go under the radar, you know, about, you know, and like, ruff. 

0:26:15

(Anders Boulanger)

Give me a West American accent there, Anders. 

0:26:18

(Dana Esposito)

For sure. I don't want to offend anyone here, no. 

0:26:21

(Anders Boulanger)

I try to. But you know what? There are a lot of Canadian, you know, in the US, sometimes Canadians for newscasters were sought after because there was a little bit more of a neutrality other than our little words that we tend to have a little Scottish influence or something over the years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

0:26:38

(Dana Esposito)

Like, oh, and here's another quick thing. 

0:26:39

(Anders Boulanger)

Or a little French sometimes, a little French. 

0:26:40

(Speaker 6)

Yes, yes. 

0:26:41

(Anders Boulanger)

So, you know, Michael J. Fox, when he was on Family Ties, we're going way back here. He was from Vancouver. He had to learn how to say, we say sorry, but he had to picture the rap dress a sorry, right? Like, so every time he said, oh, sorry about that, right? Like that's a little tricks, right? 

0:27:02

(Anders Boulanger)

Yeah. Yeah. So we're talking about all of this, the engagement and stuff, but you'd also mentioned, and I wanted you to explain a little bit more about how it can instill trust. 

0:27:15

(Chris Dunn)

and like how it can be like a catalyst for building trust? Yeah, I think it's definitely about, I mean, first capturing their attention and then that connection piece, that meaningful interactions, you know, the rapport where, you know, I build rapport with a crowd of people, which has some other layers to it. But the idea that the more we are alike, the more we like each other. And if we see ourselves in that other person, then we start trusting them inherently, okay, because of that, right. And of course, you got to do what you say you're going to do, you know, you have to develop a little bit of a track record with people to really get that trust. Absolutely. 

0:27:57

(Chris Dunn)

But but in that booth, you know, how we our body language, how we talk with the person we're just talking about, but my accent, you know, but we do have to slow down if we're in a place that has a slower cadence. right? 

0:28:13

(Anders Boulanger)

If we're talking too fast, there is a disconnect there. You're not going to build rapport. And so a lot of these things, you know, I just love zooming in on it. I'm a bit of a nerd, and I geek out about this stuff. But it's tough for people to think about all these things, right? Because you've got all your, yeah, yeah. 

0:28:33

(Anders Boulanger)

And, I mean, and that's, you know, you got your own business to worry about and your own, you know, your own whether it's competitive decks and our battle cards and the things that you got to worry about working a booth. But, you know, when we can connect with people and, and be present, I think it goes a long ways to building trust with people and start that beginning of a relationship on the floor. Yeah. Let me jump in if I could, because when I think of somebody who does magic on a trade show floor and then hearing everything that you've had to say here, you To me, you're like part salesperson, part psychologist, part expert marketer. 

0:29:22

(Speaker 4)

You're packaging an awful lot into or under an umbrella that is magic and entertainment, right? 

0:29:31

(Anders Boulanger)

When people seek you out or others like you, folks who kind of do live presentations at events like this, And you've also started this Engageify, right? You've built a business. 

0:29:44

(Speaker 17)

It's not really about magic. 

0:29:46

(Anders Boulanger)

It's about how to engage. What's first, the chicken or the egg? Did you learn these things by being on the show floor and engaging with people, or did you kind of learn them on the side and then pull them into your on -floor presence to really amplify your effects? A bit of both. So I mean, the energy and we and one of the reasons you you don't hear magicians talk like I do, it's because, you know, and we don't, if you go on engageifies, engageify . ai, the website, and by the way, the AI is not artificial intelligence. 

0:30:21

(Anders Boulanger)

It's for authentic interactions. That's what we say. But if you go there, you're not going to really see the word magic. And just to kind of talk about that is, when people hear magician, they might automatically go to a guy in a tuxedo pulling a rabbit out of a hat, cheesy, gimmicky, Dana, you used the word gimmick earlier, you know, and it's, and so that's not what we're trying to paint. right? We're, we're trying to so we use the word infotainer as to describe what it is. 

0:30:50

(Anders Boulanger)

So it's information in an entertaining and engaging way, right? I just being a performer, you learn a lot of things, because of the short feedback loop, tight feedback loop. right? That idea is you, you said something, it was funny. Oh, that was funny. That was good. 

0:31:06

(Anders Boulanger)

Pat, pat, pat, right? Or they clapped or whatever they reacted. And so then you start going, oh, this is how I am. This is how I do it. You may not know exactly why it works, but it works. Right. 

0:31:18

(Anders Boulanger)

And so that's kind of that from one side, when I started studying this and looking at, oh, that's why that works. Then I started like, looking at other areas and other things. So I kind of came at it from both sides. One of the examples is, you know, sometimes, and I'm going to use Dana's gimmick word again, if you don't mind, is that sometimes they say, Oh, magic's too gimmicky. And, and really what what you see there is, if you picture a triangle, and again, I'm big into drawing these things out, but a triangle is kind of a model. There's three sides to it. 

0:31:53

(Anders Boulanger)

And, and we call this engaging elements, whatever you do, if you can bring in these three, you're going to create more engagement around your message. So one of them is storytelling. So how do you tell the story? And storytelling gets thrown around a lot in corporate marketing. This is our story. No, those are your messaging points. 

0:32:16

(Anders Boulanger)

That's not a story. If you can actually tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end, or maybe start talking and break down a case study or something. In my case, a lot of my demonstrations they have a beginning, middle and end. And we're talking about a journey from point A to point B. And there's an aha moment in the middle. Okay, so that storytelling with 

0:32:39

(Speaker 6)

magic, there's wonder. 

0:32:42

(Anders Boulanger)

And when I say wonder, I don't want to kind of go like, oh, like that. But there is this sense of curiosity that is created. 

0:32:51

(Speaker 17)

We're cultivating curiosity because we're doing something that is different. 

0:32:56

(Anders Boulanger)

We're not exactly sure where this is going. And when we can invoke a state of curiosity in our audience, That's a very powerful state for them to be in to sell to. Because you can disrupt incumbents, right? That they might've thought, this is the way it is. And you're like, actually, it's not. And we can say, here's how things are different now, right? 

0:33:20

(Anders Boulanger)

And so get them to wonder, oh, how's that work, right? So that's a good place to have them, okay? And then, so those are the top three. And then the bottom is, there's gotta be a payoff. There's got to be a twist. 

0:33:32

(Speaker 24)

I said aha moment a second ago. 

0:33:34

(Speaker 4)

What is that dopamine spike that comes out of this that they go, Oh, you know, like, there was there was a payoff, right? 

0:33:43

(Chris Dunn)

Like you, you watch, you are there for something. And then if nothing happens, I feel like I wasted my time. Right. And, and so again, like I said, those, those things that we call that engaging elements. And when you kind of combine them, yeah, you get curiosity, you get attention, and you really create something memorable. Okay. 

0:34:04

(Chris Dunn)

So all of that is, is what magic does, you can do it in other ways, too. 

0:34:10

(Speaker 6)

But it works quite well in magic. 

0:34:12

(Chris Dunn)

And so that's kind of whenever we hear, yeah, why magic, you know, it can, and it can also symbolize a lot. right, a lot of visual metaphors that represent something that is not really, you know, if I had three pieces of rope different lengths, I can talk about a chart, I can talk about different size companies, I can talk about all these kind of things that can themselves to the situation. And whenever you use props psychologically, things that you can grab and hold in your hand, there are mere neurons that fire. watching that person do that because you know what that feels like yourself. And so just using props actually is an engagement tactic to make people, you know, connect with you. 

0:34:56

(Chris Dunn)

So there's some, you know, again, I'm geeking out about this stuff. I'll shut up. Ask one of your questions. 

0:35:01

(Speaker 11)

It's all good. 

0:35:02

(Anders Boulanger)

Okay. You know, a lot of folks that we talk to, everybody's like, what do you see? What's new? What's working out there? And, oh, I saw this, you know, tech type of a play to attract attention, wow factor, whatever the case may be. There's a million of these things out there, whether they're like a whack -a -mole game or a, you know, some sort of a video interaction or whatever. 

0:35:26

(Anders Boulanger)

But we always, you know, we welcome the conversation. But we always kind of have to come back to like, you can't just have tech for tech's sake. It has to make sense. And what you're saying is ultimately the same thing, right? When you are working with a client to create a strategy on how you're going to amplify their message and bring the people in and everything, it's not like, hey, so then I pull a bunny out of my hat and then I light myself on fire. And then, you know, it's like we're all dialed in. 

0:35:53

(Anders Boulanger)

Right. So what is that? Wasn't really on our kind of talking points here, but But for folks out there who are considering, if you're an exhibitor and you're considering bringing in some live entertainment to help, what does that conversation look like? Do you start with an in -depth questionnaire to kind of go through with that exhibitor? Like, what's your message? What are we trying to say? 

0:36:12

(Anders Boulanger)

And then you start working with them to mold this overall presentation and the talking points? Yeah. Yeah, you're right. So we do have a questionnaire that we send over. 

0:36:21

(Speaker 23)

We call it a message engineering questionnaire. 

0:36:25

(Anders Boulanger)

Well, we've honed that over years and years and just trying to get to the core. core, you know, what is what is what are they really trying to say? 

0:36:32

(Speaker 22)

And ideally, you know, the magic number is three, right? 

0:36:36

(Anders Boulanger)

Just people, if we can get it down to three things that I'm going to say, but I'm going to say them again, and again, in different ways. so that it sinks into the mind, and they actually will remember it, right? And if we give them a peak experience, their chances of remembering it are so much higher too, right? So what is those three things? Because you know what it's like with, you know, corporate marketing, there's a lot of lingo, a lot of like, they just throw a bunch of stuff. And I'm like, would you read that in front of someone? 

0:37:05

(Anders Boulanger)

Like, would you read that in front of my prospect? And it's like, no, you know, so there is this level of being a filter, right? right? For how do we really talk about that? Can I put that in simple terms? You know, we always say we got to simplify to engage a five, right? 

0:37:21

(Anders Boulanger)

I work in tech all the time, that needs to have content clarity, we got to bring that down to something that is so much easier to consume. And just a little more brain science for you, you know, our brain is 22 % of our body weight, but only it but it consumes 20 % of our energy. And so whenever anything gets too complex, we get into cognitive overload, which is just overwhelmed, right? Just it's like our brain says, no, not worth the calories. I don't want to do it. Right. 

0:37:49

(Anders Boulanger)

So we got to make it simple. We got to make it easy for them to follow along. They get it. And that's what the visual metaphor is. That's what the storytelling, that's what that's all for. So to get back to your thing, they fill out the questionnaire, send it back to me. 

0:38:03

(Anders Boulanger)

We book a clarity call where we then be able to ask more questions and say, could we say this? Could we say that? And push them a little bit on this stuff. And I mean, some companies have it down pretty good. And then some companies, you know, they need a lot of help. So it just depends. 

0:38:19

(Anders Boulanger)

But we need to basically answer three things. And this is my, and when we when we do a show, we do a presentation, people will come up to us and my other infotainers as well. And they say, Do you work for the company? 

0:38:32

(Chris Dunn)

Like they're confused. 

0:38:34

(Speaker 16)

Because we talked about the company with great confidence. 

0:38:37

(Anders Boulanger)

And we we sounded like we knew our stuff. 

0:38:40

(Anders Boulanger)

And yet we displayed a skill set that's uncommon. 

0:38:43

(Speaker 20)

Right. 

0:38:43

(Dana Esposito)

And then and my joke is always, yeah, they found me in the mail room, you know, like that kind of thing. But but with that, you know, when we want to really fine tune it, it is about answering these three things is how do you how does your company and if it's a B2B kind of thing, how do you make money or help that company save money? You know, your prospect? How do you save them time? And I mean, time and money is productivity. There's the ways you interchange or interact. 

0:39:13

(Dana Esposito)

And then the third one is, how do you give them greater peace of mind? And really, all companies do those things. And that's what we do is we cut through the clutter to say, how do you do those things? And that allows us to understand it at that level that is very benefit driven. It's the idea that if we want to create engagement, we have to either spike dopamine or norepinephrine. Dopamine is what's in it for me. 

0:39:39

(Dana Esposito)

Norepinephrine is the stress. I want to avoid the stress. So we're either going to, it's the carrot and the stick, if you will. And so we want to look at those ways of pushing those kind of engagement drivers or those neurotransmitters. This is way deeper than. Too deep? 

0:39:58

(Dana Esposito)

We're doing cognitive overload. This is awesome. I'm going to the cognitive overload. It's not deep at all. There are some clients that we're able to have these types of conversations with, actually, and that we even talk to upcoming design students about, and that is really engaging more of the human senses beyond sight. 

0:40:23

(Dana Esposito)

And let's say you're having someone give a presentation. Maybe you have a theater in your booth, so you've got sight and you've got sound, right? Well, maybe there's something interactive in that presentation. Like I'm going to oversimplify just for the sake of this conversation. Maybe the presenter surprises them with something and they throw like a beach ball out of the audience or something. Now there's like a hands -on tactile thing in that sense of touch. 

0:40:47

(Dana Esposito)

You know, are you serving food? 

0:40:49

(Anders Boulanger)

You know, sense of taste, sense of smell. So every one of the human senses that you can gauge another one, you're basically powering and firing other different senses. areas of the brain. And every time that happens, now you're really getting to harness and access learning and memorability. I mean, if I said to you right now, just as a sense of smell, think of something, a smell, that when you remember, it brings you back to something when you were little. Um, and for me, uh, like a certain smells like, um, remind my house burnt down when I was little. 

0:41:23

(Anders Boulanger)

It's not traumatic. It's fine. It's not a thing. 

0:41:25

(Dana Esposito)

Everyone was fine, even the pets, but like there's certain smells. Like I'm like, what does that smell? I'm like, Oh my God, it totally reminds me of like the house fire because a house structure fire is very different than like say a bonfire, you know, or grill fire. Um, so. I mean, grandma's cookies, there's a smell, her cookies versus just somebody else's cookies. So that's just one sense, sense of smell. 

0:41:47

(Dana Esposito)

So if you can do that with sounds or touch, um, it's just going to make your experience an actual and experience and that much more powerful and really help all the big dollars you're spending on putting on this event and attending the show with your exhibit. Um, there's much more of return on that. It's not just ROI return on investment. It's there's another term I've heard lately that, I try to keep it in the back of my mind, which is ROE, return on the engagement portion of that. You know, the engagement portion is really basically like throwing fuel on your event and your structure. If you can make a memorable, impactful engagement, then everything else you've done at that event now is more meaningful. 

0:42:31

(Dana Esposito)

Yeah. 

0:42:32

(Anders Boulanger)

You know, Dana, when he's talking about the senses, one of the things that, when that really came, you know, you know, really seemed true to me was one of my clients was doing beer and bacon in the booth. And, and so they cranked up and they had this bacon and on Twitter, this is back when kind of Twitter was in it more of in its infancy, but it was, but people were, you know, hashtagging the event and everything. And someone was like, I smell bacon. And they're, they don't know where that what booth it is. But they were like, live tweeting they were getting closer and then finally finding it, yeah, I'm getting warmer. And then finally, hey, it was booth 1402, blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever company, right. 

0:43:13

(Anders Boulanger)

And just kind of like celebrating the discovery. So, you know, there is, everything's better with bacon, right. You know, so there's, there's, there's that. Well think about over the last few years, cookies where yes, you could give, give out a cookie, right. 

0:43:27

(Speaker 6)

But I don't know if you've noticed the last few years, they have these machines that can be rented. 

0:43:31

(Dana Esposito)

So you're actually cooking, like baking the cookie on site. That is for two purposes. One, it's going to smell. People are gonna sniff it out, almost like the bacon situation. And the second part is you're serving someone a warm cookie. And a warm cookie is very much of that feeling of home and safety, right? 

0:43:48

(Dana Esposito)

That's where you get a warm cookie typically is. And not only have they done it on show site, a lot of hotels have started doing that because hotels want you to pick them and their brand and be a repeat customer. So they're serving warm cookies your home, they want you to feel home. It's a very powerful, if you can get someone first, if you can evoke their curiosity, but then you can also evoke another feeling from them, that's extremely memorable and powerful. And I think making people feel something, period, is key. 

0:44:21

(Dana Esposito)

And I find that I have another model. I talk about the trade show triangle. 

0:44:25

(Anders Boulanger)

And to get to the very top of the level of different categories of exhibitors, we say the top one is experiencer. you know, they're creating experiences. Adding emotion is how you get to that level. It's not just about putting on something, but it has to have some sort of emotional quality to it. And I think companies need to sometimes give themselves permission or kind of look themselves in the mirror and say, this is okay to do, you know, whenever I say emotional, it sounds like, like, not, that's not what I mean, you know, but it's just like, can they feel something in some companies are so, you know, you know, just, there's a, there's, I think it's a fear factor. Fear factor, but they're just so caught and dry, so buttoned up, that you're kind of like, Guys, I gotta loosen up just a little bit. 

0:45:14

(Anders Boulanger)

And just even the idea of having fun, you know, in the booth is maybe sometimes not embraced, right? Yeah, yeah. 

0:45:23

(Dana Esposito)

So I mean, like, to try to explain to them you don't have to lose the personality of your brand to do something memorable. 

0:45:31

(Dana Esposito)

When we say make a feeling, it doesn't mean we're telling you you need to be silly. you know, just the fact of, if you just think about just the structure itself, like we'll back it all the way up just to the structure, which isn't typically moving unless there's some graphics or what have you. If I remember years ago, when I first started this industry, especially in the medical industry, if you were designing exhibit, they'd be like, well, you know, our logo colors are blue and white. And, you know, that's because that's what everybody in the industry is. And we want the booth to be pretty, you know, simple and plain, because that's what everybody in the industry does. And I kept hearing, and for more than one client, because that's what everybody in the industry does. 

0:46:03

(Dana Esposito)

And I'm thinking to myself, well, if that's what everyone does, I'd want to be the company who does what everybody else doesn't do, because then I'm going to stand out. And it doesn't mean I need to have an inflatable chicken on top of my exhibit, because that would not make any sense with my brand or anything, unless it was like the International Poultry Expo or something. 

0:46:20

(Anders Boulanger)

But I mean, that's the perfect opportunity to be like, oh, we can do something different. 

0:46:25

(Chris Dunn)

And it can still be us. to stand out. And that's just starting with the exhibit doesn't even get to all the wonderful things that we could brainstorm that has more of like an engagement, engagement interactive element to it. That's corporate culture for you, though, Dana, sometimes just that. And when you're making a decision that you have to answer for, you know, and the higher ups are going to see this, like there's a lot of pressure on these people to do the right thing and everything. I was at a recent trade show where I guess I was only supposed to perform during reception hours, doing my normal thing. 

0:47:01

(Chris Dunn)

And that's not usually the case. I usually can just do it, you know, throughout the show. 

0:47:05

(Anders Boulanger)

And I did do a show a little early and I got shut down by show management so fast because of certain rules at this show. And they said, we can't let you take attention away from other exhibitors. 

0:47:19

(Speaker 18)

And I was kind of like, well, I think that's what the truth is for, you know? 

0:47:23

(Anders Boulanger)

So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there are, there are a lot of, um, rules and regulations, especially with pharmaceutical and some of the, and those, and those I get, but still, I think I would still, like I said, it's costs a lot and a lot of effort to, for a client to go to a show. Um, so where I always look for with, with the whole, you know, I'm not breaking any rules at all, but how am I going to stand out right and that's when people will, I mean they bring in us they bring in you to brainstorm about what is the thing that's going to help really illustrate who we are, what we do in a memorable teaching way. 

0:48:03

(Anders Boulanger)

And so for some people, it's also got a little lightheartedness. For others, it's just not part of their brand personality, but it doesn't mean it can't still be impactful. Even just the element of provoking curiosity, I think it's amazing to be able to provoke that sense in a person, especially where there's so much going on these days. We're all just inundated with things. It's so easy to see new ideas. So if you can surprise someone a little bit, That right there is a big, that's a big win. 

0:48:36

(Anders Boulanger)

Yeah. I love the back and forth between you guys. Let me, before we go on to anything else, let's tie the two of you together and say, we've got a client, they want to design a booth and they want to leave space for some sort of an engagement, Engageify, right? We're going to hire these guys to do this thing. 

0:48:57

(Speaker 17)

What, How, Anders, do you tend to get involved with the exhibit design process to make sure you have the space? 

0:49:06

(Anders Boulanger)

We've identified the hot corner. Here's your reception desk. What do you physically need room -wise, number of square feet, and do you need counters, tables? What does that look like if we've got, again, listeners out there who want to try to work something like you guys into their existing or newly designed exhibit? Yeah, well, we try to be I mean, we love when they when our clients and it's usually the client, not the new clients, because they don't they don't completely trust us yet. Right? 

0:49:33

(Anders Boulanger)

Like, it's kind of like, we'll try you out first. Let's see. And then then they start listening to us. Right. But once they see that, but yeah, we actually I'm getting sent Friday, PDF of booth designs, and they want our take on it, you know, just to kind of look at things. And and one of the things that I'm just going to say this to Dana, and you were talking about some of the design students earlier to the 

0:49:55

(Anders Boulanger)

know, pass this on. Okay. Because we see this a lot where you have that hot corner. You talked about Chris and you put that reception desk there, the blocker, the blockade, the blocks it. And then they sometimes have a presentation theater behind that. And you're like, path of least resistance is so big, right? 

0:50:13

(Anders Boulanger)

And it's like, put that feeder right out on the aisle as much as possible, you know, make it so and I'm talking about if you're having internal presentations, and you want some seats in the booth and everything, you know, just do not block that off. Because it's it becomes and I and my colleagues and people out there, I remember walking by it at HIMSS last year and I saw someone work in a booth. I'm like, how's that going? 

0:50:37

(Speaker 6)

You know, cause I knew it would just be a nightmare. 

0:50:39

(Anders Boulanger)

And, and they're like, Oh, and I'm, so it's like, you know, if you're going to have a theater, never block it off with a reception desk. That's just, that's just a general thing. But for us, we are pretty flexible. So if, if we are, there's going to be internal presentations, internal presentations, meaning your people or partners are going to be presenting, we're going to want to have seating and make it an in booth theater. Okay. because the path of least resistance, if you're sitting, is you're going to stay sitting, right? 

0:51:07

(Anders Boulanger)

And so when you have presenters that are not professional presenters, it's nice to have people stick around and be an audience for them, even if they're not high level, right? So that's one of those things. You get them sitting, and then you're in good shape that way. We do a lot of aisle view presentations, meaning we just need about, well, you know, the size of a suitcase that you would check Yeah. If you laid that down flat on the floor, that's how much space we need. And we would play to the aisle. 

0:51:37

(Anders Boulanger)

And so the safety in numbers, people feel good in the aisle. Do you ever notice they never want to cross over that carpet? Like, you know, like, they feel good out there. So we need about that much space. And the reason I say that is we have a portable stage. 

0:51:51

(Anders Boulanger)

They're made out of carbon fiber. Actually, they're only eight pounds, but they support our weight. You know, that will sit and it's covered and it's just black and it kind of just is invisible. We sit that on the corner and then we'll be able to build those crowds. 

0:52:04

(Chris Dunn)

And then we have to decide when the design is, okay, what's that next step? 

0:52:08

(Dana Esposito)

What do you want these people to do? 

0:52:10

(Speaker 16)

If they're qualified, what would you want the next step to be? 

0:52:12

(Anders Boulanger)

In tech, it's often a demo. right. 

0:52:14

(Anders Boulanger)

So we will then lead that crowd over to a demo station. 

0:52:18

(Chris Dunn)

And it's nice if that demo station isn't too far away, right? Where is that next step, we can maybe get them a little bit deeper into the booth, but it's like the idea that we want to be able to move. 

0:52:28

(Anders Boulanger)

So we try not to take up too much space, like there's, there's so many activations that just are hogs on space, like I saw one at KubeCon when just this year ago, it was a bartending robot. And it took up a whole 10 by 20. Because they had to have all the drinks and supplies for it and this whole thing. 

0:52:50

(Dana Esposito)

And it's like, and it wasn't pulling a crowd either. 

0:52:53

(Speaker 15)

So you know, actually, Chris, While I'm saying that, I've actually put together a Google Sheet thing that I call a booth activation effectiveness matrix, where I rank activations based on how much size they take. 

0:53:09

(Chris Dunn)

Do they build a crowd? Do they impart a message? Do they create qualified leads or just raw leads? I categorize all these activations I've seen over the years and give them a score. And so, um, I'd be happy to share the link with that. And if you want to post it or whatever you want to do, it's, it's kind of makes us think about these things. 

0:53:28

(Chris Dunn)

Cause you know, again, with booth space, you want to get most bang for your buck. And, and so when we're done, we can actually move our stage out of the way and you go back to your normal booth, right? 

0:53:38

(Anders Boulanger)

So there's, there's ways of being flexible and sometimes we want to stage it up a little bit bigger and there's a designated space. And we put in one of our booths. or a stages design for us. And that does up the booth authority, right? That this is an official thing and feels more like, you know, this is built right in. And so that's kind of, you know, how we work with companies on the design. 

0:54:01

(Anders Boulanger)

So less like you're just like a street performer who just happened to set up camp. Right, right. Like, are you with, you know, where's your badge? Yeah, well, we do everything we do so that we're dressed and, you know, the props, even like, you know, I have different color ropes that are the same brand as whatever the color. 

0:54:20

(Chris Dunn)

So, yeah, we do show up very much on point, on brand and on fire. 

0:54:24

(Speaker 14)

Yeah. 

0:54:25

(Anders Boulanger)

Awesome. What, what, how much time do you need to get ready for something like that? So, you know, we're encouraging people to start engaging with us four months in advance, 16 weeks, basically, you know, where do you kind of come in, in an ideal scenario? Ideal scenario, we, we see most companies engage with us about three months out. 

0:54:43

(Speaker 13)

You know, we have done much shorter, of course, you don't like to jam yourself up and know that we got to customize the presentation and everything. 

0:54:50

(Anders Boulanger)

But that's, you know, but that's typical, but we, we can do, you know, hustle up offense with, with less time. 

0:54:56

(Chris Dunn)

Gotcha. Cool. Okay. All right, well, guys, we are right about 55 minutes, and we look to keep the toolbox to right around an hour. So this has worked out tremendously. 

0:55:07

(Dana Esposito)

We do like to try to cap off our conversation. And Anders, you've been tremendous. You've dropped so much knowledge and so many great ideas and so forth. But I'm going to pump you for a couple more, just because that's how we roll. A couple of takeaways you can leave our listeners with and or. Are there some things that you've already talked about you want to circle back, put a bow on it and just say, you know, if you can only do two things like do this. 

0:55:32

(Dana Esposito)

I think one of the ones and this is just, I'm passionate about the people side of things that we spend so much 

0:55:40

(Speaker 11)

money on the booth. 

0:55:41

(Anders Boulanger)

Another one of these models I have is that 80 -85 % of a budget is the booth and the booth space and all of these things. 75 -80 % is the booth, 10 -15 % is your T &E, and only 5 -10 % is spent on the engagement. what's the part that actually moves the needle, right? Is, you know, you got to, there's certain things you got to have, but we got to focus on the things that really, and we talked about the gains are in the engagement. 

0:56:15

(Dana Esposito)

So that'd be one thing I'd say, you know, what are you doing to truly engage, right? 

0:56:20

(Speaker 10)

And then, and with that, that kind of tacks on to that is invest in your people. 

0:56:25

(Chris Dunn)

Like, my goodness, there's more trainings at companies on how to properly take vacation than there is to work at Trade Show Booth. So that idea of making sure that it's looking at the whole situation, because we make them stop, but if we don't have those meaningful interactions, there's a big hole in our bridge across the engagement gap, and we want to have each of those bridge stones. 

0:56:51

(Anders Boulanger)

Does Engageify offer booth staff training as a component? Yeah, we do. And we actually do it in person. 

0:56:58

(Speaker 9)

We can do it on demand, meaning you just get a link and people can train on their way to the show on their phone. 

0:57:04

(Anders Boulanger)

And then we also do it virtually, too. So getting the whole team together before the show and doing it that way. Gotcha. Awesome. Dana, I mean, he's covered in a whole lot of stuff. 

0:57:14

(Speaker 4)

I know we could talk for a couple more hours. 

0:57:16

(Chris Dunn)

You guys have certainly found a happy place comparing notes between designers and engagement and so forth. Anything that you want to kind of end with? Before we ask how to best reach our friend Anders. No, I do love though that Anders has that same. sort of philosophy about the engagement element. 

0:57:38

(Speaker 8)

Obviously, myself and a lot of other people in our industry do. 

0:57:41

(Speaker 7)

I would just encourage clients to really think about that when you're thinking about all the other parts of the exhibit. 

0:57:47

(Speaker 6)

Maybe you carve out a bucket specifically for the engagement, whatever that engagement might be. 

0:57:58

(Dana Esposito)

I don't know, I just feel like it's such a powerful tool, no matter how you slice and dice it, that it shouldn't be a last minute thing. 

0:58:04

(Chris Dunn)

And from the design side, when I'm thinking about the structure and the strategy for the show and the whole program, if we know that a client's going to have someone like Anders there and engaged, we'd like to know that as soon as possible so we can make sure that the exhibit, not only the structure, but the messaging can really support it and help amplify in any way that we can. Great. And I want to add one more thing too. If you're watching this and you're an event manager and you've never been to Exhibitor Live or heard of the Certified Trade Show Marketing designation, get into that. If you liked any of the stuff I said, I do a bunch of sessions at that show and you'll be able to learn with me in person. So yeah, check out Exhibitor Live. 

0:58:47

(Chris Dunn)

I'll have to see you there this year, Anders. Awesome. We should probably, you know, take his class. All right, Anders, how do people best reach you? Yeah, well, they can find me here on LinkedIn. My name's right down below, and it's just LinkedIn Anders Belanger. 

0:59:07

(Chris Dunn)

Or you can check out our website, engageify . 

0:59:11

(Speaker 4)

ai. And then the book has its own page on there, but you can go to engage -first . 

0:59:17

(Chris Dunn)

com. And on it, you can download a PDF on four ways to be more engaging. And if you do buy the book, you get a free presentation training that we offer as well. So that's all on engage -first . com. is like crazy. So, 

0:59:32

(Chris Dunn)

So, hey guys, this has been awesome. 

0:59:35

(Speaker 4)

I feel like our level of a guest has just been climbing up. 

0:59:43

(Chris Dunn)

And Anders, I think you really brought a lot to the table. Again, making sure that people understand that being a trade show magician is really very... Infotainer. Infotainer. 

0:59:59

(Speaker 4)

Infotainer. Right. Well, that's, that's the point, right? It's like, I'm not really a magician. What I am is a marketing strategist wrapped up as somebody who knows how to pretend, sorry, present, confidently engage people, like all of that stuff. That's all part of what you guys bring to the table. 

1:00:15

And that's awesome and great kind of sneak peek or just a peek behind the curtain at kind of how people are chunking up their trade show budgets. And are they really allocating the proper amount of budget towards the things that do move the needle? And on our end, we see that the services are way bigger than they used to be. We used to carve out 30, 40 percent for services. Now we've got to go to like 60 percent, which means that we're pulling pieces out of the booth in order to try to meet budgets. But it's all a balancing act. 

1:00:47

We got to, you know, we got to work together. to make sure that people are or that companies are getting the ROI and the ROE that they need from the shows, because if they don't, then they're going to stop doing the shows. So all that stuff. Awesome, guys. Thank you so much. This has been fantastic. 

1:01:04

Thanks, everybody, for tuning in again. This was live. Now it's going to be available on YouTube as well as still here at LinkedIn at the very same link. And then we show up on your favorite podcast platforms within a couple of days as well. So cheers to everybody. Hey, Rich Keefe, how you doing? 

1:01:23

Thanks. Be good, everybody. Have a great rest of your day. and take care. Happy eventing.