Verticality: The Past, Present, and Future of Trade Shows
I first heard about the “death of the trade show” in 2001. 23 years later and the format is still going strong. Moral: Humans are social animals.
The tragedy of 9/11 changed personal and professional travel forever. TSA, liquids, one-quart bags, removing shoes. Company boards took a long, hard look at play and luxury meeting destinations and decided Las Vegas, Orlando, and San Diego might not be the best locales to send their people or their investments. Through 2002-2003 a significant portion of the populace was effectively grounded while speculation surged around if, when, and how we’d ever travel again in the face of such considerable risk.
But trade events? Masses of humans gathered in a single building, rife for attack or exploitation? We were living in a new world and we’d never be so vulnerable again. But air travel resumed within days. And by 2005 the world was back to pre 9/11 numbers – and back on the trade show floor.
The second time I heard alarm bells about “the death of the events industry” was in 2008 as the sub-prime mortgage crisis and ensuing Great Recession shook families and corporations to their core.
The markets instantly contracted, consolidated, and conserved, wondering if fiscally at-risk or ruined consumers or business workers could or would ever afford to attend conferences again. Executive leaderships and event owners forced to justify the huge cost of corporate gatherings cancelled in waves.
Yet even this global catastrophe only reduced trade events by 8.9%, and in mid-2009 the economy began to rebuild and grow at a surprising rate. In 2012 the industry was back at close to full force.
The most recent time we heard certainty that “in-person trade events were gone forever” was in 2020 as the world shuttered in the face of a mysterious and untraceable pandemic.
Long before COVID-19 was identified, labeled, and became politicized and divisive, sales meetings and conventions went from record-breaking to nonexistent in a matter of days. On March 1st, 2020 we were watching the news, and on March 12th we were locking the doors and wiping down cereal boxes. The longer our hibernation ran through that summer and fall, waiting for vaccines, wondering what we were up against and why, the fear grew and isolation became normal.
New technologies – already long-since conceived and planned for – sped up development and delivery, offering the promise we’d never have to step back into a room together again. And we hated it. 18 months later, the planet tentatively stuck its big toe out the front door, and when that toe didn’t turn gangrenous or fall off, it led us back into the grocery store. Then onto a plane. Then back to personal and business travel.
2024 set new records for airline ticket sales, foreign visits, and trade show attendance. If it’s not clear by now that the era of in-person will never end, for any reason, it should be. The proof is indisputable.
Bye Bye COMDEX
Humans are evolutionary creatures who prefer community over isolation. Terrorism, finance, or disease can’t alter in 2-3 years what’s been fundamental to our species for 250,000 years. Business has always worked best face-to-face. But its nature has evolved, and will continue to do so. The biggest evolution of the past 30 years has been verticality; the narrowing, specializing, and tailoring of in-person events.
The poster child for this move toward verticality was the Computer Dealers’ Exhibition or COMDEX, a massive event which ran from 1979-2003 and grew to be one of the largest and most unwieldy corporate trade shows of all time. Dubbed “Geek Week”, COMDEX became a sprawling, disjointed mess known for major product announcements and anticipated next-gen releases. In 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble, COMDEX peaked at 220,000 attendees. In 2003, attendance was down 80% to 40,000. In 2004, the entire event went bust, leaving a valuable lesson in corporate communications strategy: Too much is simply too much.
First blame for the demise of COMDEX went to the dot-com bust. Only that bust didn’t kill other powerhouse tech events like CES, Networld+Interop, or Oracle OpenWorld; it just nudged them to restructure and re-strategize.
The next fingers of blame were pointed at major players like IBM, Apple, and Compaq (which later merged with Hewlett-Packard). All pulled out of exhibiting at COMDEX in the late 90s to reallocate their resources toward smaller user group or direct-to-consumer events. These leaders saw the broad, horizontal marketplace of “all things to all people”-style mega events as a dead end and chose the more focused, targeted, narrower vertical approach as a better investment.
It looked like the end of the modern trade show. Instead, the masses that once attended one large event now attended several smaller events.
The Turbulent 2000s
Where a single event in the 1990s once drew 100,000 visitors, 20 smaller events now hosted 5,000 each. Year by year, an employee and their boss knew exactly why to attend a specific conference, what they were there to learn, who they’d learn it from, and how to make more informed buying decisions at that particular show. The market had gone vertical.
New concerns sprouted up through the 2000s and 2010s. Executive leaderships suddenly saw corporate conferences in fancy, expensive destinations as an excuse for their people to play instead of work. To prevent trade events from being unnecessary junkets, popular spots like New York, San Francisco, Cabo San Lucas, and Las Vegas declined while secondary markets like Detroit, St. Louis, Dallas, Atlanta, and Charlotte picked up. This made arguments to allow and finance a corporate trip more palatable to company brass. Only location didn’t make a difference. Turns out employees would play wherever they went. And because vertical shows helped them work smarter and conduct better business, attendees were quickly back at Disneyland and the Hold Em’ tables.
At the same time, long before COVID-19, event owners and managers were playing with new approaches to the traditional conference. Virtual trade shows, digital open houses, and seminar-style Zoom calls were tested, launched, and touted as the next wave to replace the in-person event. But surprise surprise, people still preferred to gather in person.
Verticality for Today and Tomorrow
The “death of the trade show” was never a real risk, but the adjustment to verticality was the next logical step in the natural evolution of the modern conference. Düsseldorf’s quadrennial print and graphics expo, drupa, was once 16 days but is now down to 11 days. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) still attracts 120,000 visitors, but is no longer open to consumers; it’s now a trade-only event for the consumer technology industry.
Online marketing has also shifted to a vertical approach. Live events and online stores are partners as well as adversaries; they support and bolster one another. An individual will test drive a vehicle in person, purchase it online, then return to a physical location for the rest of that vehicle’s lifespan. A corporation will establish an online/virtual relationship with a partner, then ink that multi-million dollar cloud solutions deal at a public event surrounded by their team. In the end, nothing supplants our preference for face-to-face engagement.
Horizontal markets are great for shopping and daily needs; Amazon, Temu, and Alibaba can be all things to all people in a quick, low stakes virtual interaction. But the boutique experience, delivering expertise, specialization, trust, and relationship longevity, is a vertical, human-to-human endeavor.
Bottom Line
The next time someone tells you trade shows are doomed, remind them of the real world lessons we’ve learned over the last 30 years. Through the end of the dot-com bubble, through 9/11, though market downturns and multiple corrections, and through a global pandemic.
We’re a resilient populace. And despite trial after tribulation, we still believe we’re best when we’re together in the same space. COMDEX is long gone, but the lessons of its rise and demise remain valuable and instructive. Long live the vertical event.
