The Northwest, where I grew up, is an easy place to live for resourceful people. You can basically live off the land. Being Russian immigrants, my parents took advantage of that. Their obsession during my childhood was fishing. Fishing bored me, so I came up with my own version of what is now known as [...]

The event marketing industry is undergoing it’s own brand evolution. We are now increasingly one industry with face-to-face and digital experiences converging into on event marketing experience.   Branding is the sum of all points of contact your audience has with your event. It’s the wait, or lack of a wait in the registration line. [...]

The Big Kahuna is my favorite movie about selling.  Starring Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito and Peter Facinelli, the story takes place the last night of a trade show, when two industrial lubricants sales-veterans and their young protégé host a reception in a hotel hospitality suite.  Released in 1999, the movie made little splash at the [...]

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As the baseball season begins, I start thinking about the tradition and long history of the sport – as much as the game changes it remains fundamentally the same. I love Yogi Berra as an icon of baseball and its culture.  His ‘Yogisms’ are legendary as he always makes it hard to tell if he [...]

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I remember September 2008 like it was yesterday.   The innervating horror stories about the financial meltdown on Wall Street:  Investment house failures, bank mergers, historic stock market plunges, industry bailouts, and collapsing ponzi schemes.   All while mysterious new terms such as, “subprime mortgages,” “derivatives” and “credit default swaps” started appearing in the American lexicon. And while [...]

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The debut of the latest gadgets and electronics on such a mega-scale can seem very overwhelming – especially at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas! This year Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) teamed up with Wired Magazine to create a really cool personal experience.  Branded “Make A Scene”, it encouraged attendees to make videos [...]

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For many of us in the convention and trade show “business” the hardest question we answer in a given day is, “So, what is it you do?”. Freeman, my employer, is “the leading provider of integrated services for face-to-face marketing and brand building events, including expositions, conventions, corporate events, meetings and exhibit programs. Our strategic, [...]

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My company, Freeman, is very committed to improving live face-to-face events.  Trade shows are a huge marketplace for face-to-face networking and education, as well as sales. We’ve all walked through trade shows and watched where the crowds gather.  In the past, it was around exhibit booths that had attractive models, celebrity autograph signings, or some [...]

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Many U.S.-based suppliers are eager to capture a share of the market for international companies who market themselves in North America — my company included.  As a sales leader for Freeman, the most progressive face-to-face marketing company in the U.S., I certainly get my fair share of opportunities to do so.  But anyone who offers their products [...]

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When I broke into sales in 1986, Alex, my first training instructor looked down at my wide-eyed baby face and trembling shoulders, and said, “Kid, if you only remember one thing about our time together, remember this formula:  Prospects + Calls + Presentations = Sales”. I’d accidentally finished college, after accidentally finishing high school, and [...]

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