Ideas: A Roundup of Top Experiential Exhibit Trends from 2023

As trade show properties move to prioritize community and connection and create more opportunities for exhibitors—Outdoor Retailer’s acquisition of an adventure lifestyle festival as one example—consumer-style experiential is infusing booths with new energy. Heading into one of the year’s biggest trade show seasons, kicking off with CES 2024, we round up experiential strategies from the exhibits we covered throughout 2023 to help inspire your builds, tactics and engagement strategies for trend-forward business audiences.

 

TUNNELS

To connect with the demanding fintech audience at the recent Money20/20, Mastercard had to capture attention in a space filled with highly engaging activations. Attendees stepped into a curved, dark tunnel lined with video screens and found themselves surrounded by a multicolored particle stream as the story of the brand’s evolution and continuous commitment to innovation unfolded around them. The three-part journey explored the various ways the brand has been instrumental in enabling its customers to do business, from cards and business payments to emerging technologies, AI and blockchain. Exiting the tunnel, attendees could dive deeper into the topics most relevant to them at five aisle-facing demo stations. 

 

SCALE & SPARKLE

For its first time at Essence Fest in July, L’Oréal leaned into the event’s hip-hop theme with an enormous gold boombox facade featuring images of cassettes as internal decor naming each separate brand under the L’Oréal umbrella. The guiding design question was, “How do you make each brand feel unique yet part of a larger experience?” As visitors waited in line, a stage for demos was visible from all angles and branded with a life-size gold cassette, “The Beauty Mixtape,” that incorporated individual brand logos—Maybelline, Carol’s Daughter, Dark & Lovely, Garnier. (Partner: Mark Stephen Experiential Agency)

 

MUSEUM COLLABS

The worlds of artistry and beauty have long been intertwined, but in the past couple of years, art museums and brand collabs have been reaching new heights. At Vision Expo West in September, eyewear brand Zenni presented its partnership with the Asian Art Museum through beautiful and thoughtful giveaways, including blue light-blocking glasses, a laser to show how the protection works, a pouch, cleaning cloths, a beauty bag and rulers for measuring the pupillary distance for finding the perfect fit. All pieces featured art from the museum’s collection, offering an elevated take on bringing the joy of discovery into focus.

 

ENTRANCE ‘FEE’

To get inside of Flexfit’s exhibit at Outdoor Retailer Summer (OR), attendees were invited to interact with a “secret servant,” a custom-made vending machine that dispensed a hat based on a participant’s answers selected on a touchpad. The activation also helped the hat manufacturer gather valuable intelligence about attendees’ product and technology preferences, which will inform the product showcase choices at the next OR. Once the interaction was completed, the vending machine would then slide off to the side, revealing a passage inside that led to a bright, modern space featuring the brand’s customization capabilities and two activation stations presenting the hats’ water-resistant properties. 

Although attendees could enter freely on other sides of the footprint as well, the wall with the vending machine generated the most traffic. Sustainability also played a key part in this exhibit: Inside, a sustainability wall focused on the brand’s efforts going forward, and the exhibit itself was built out of a reusable frame with stretch fabric interchanged based on the event.

 

NOSTALGIA

For its best-in-show-winning booth at the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show (KBIS), Jan. 30 to Feb. 3, Kohler married the past and the future with the message “Come All Creators” and a design chiefly inspired by its 150th anniversary campaign. Throughout the booth, the team incorporated products from the Kohler vault, like a clawfoot bathtub from the 1930s. Free-standing displays told stories of different creators Kohler has collaborated with over the years, including one with photographer Douglas Friedman, who helped Kohler recreate an iconic 1980s print ad he shot, “Toilet in the Road,” as part of the launch of Kohler’s Numi 2.0 smart toilet. (Partners: Freeman, 3D Exhibits, ConceptWorks)

And with the automotive aftermarket industry so heavily focused on restoration, it came as no surprise that brands big and small at the SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) Show in Las Vegas, Oct. 31-Nov. 3, leaned into that narrative. Restomod Air built its exhibit out of a rusty shipping container lined with repurposed wood—a perfect backdrop for shiny controls and LED vent covers. A drive-in diner-style exhibit complete with neon lights showcased Walmart’s e-commerce platform and the brand’s white-label delivery service. The space was anchored by Walton’s 5-10, a reference to the brand’s original Walton’s 5 &10 Cent Store, which offered a backdrop for the presentations next to a custom F-150, a treasure of the Walmart Museum. 

 

LIVE ART

Ray-Ban and Meta teamed up for the next generation of smart glasses, and the line to get hands-on with them wrapped around the corner of the massive booth of Essilor-Luxottica, Ray-Ban’s parent company, at Vision Expo West. Rooted in Ray-Ban’s “Genuine since you left your mark” campaign, the experience invited attendees to “make their own mark” on a glass installation created by visual artist Cam Parker in his signature mural style. A professional photographer took their picture, which they could download from a QR code and share on socials, before moving on to the Ray-Ban art bag station, where they could customize a colorful tote with fabric markers and glue-on patches. More than 1,000 bags were given out on the first day alone. 

 

DOWN AND DIRTY DEMOS

Wanna rebuild your first carburetor? Paint perfect pinstripes? Real Deal Revolution, a women-empowerment nonprofit, at SEMA brought together brands, experts and attendees at the She Shed to get their hands dirty with real new tools and techniques. Although women were the core of the audience, guys were just as enthusiastic and made up a good part of the crowd. Rosie the Riveter would have been proud.

 

TEXTURES

Reddit brought b-to-c vibes to the annual Online Marketing Rockstars (OMR) Festival in Hamburg, Germany, in May—a b-to-b event with a festival groove at its core. To physically illustrate how its platform is a place where “communities grow,” the brand planted roots on the exhibit floor in the form of a “Reddit Garten.” Attendees were invited to either take a staff-guided tour of the space or self-navigate as they explored towering flower installations representing some of Reddit’s most popular German communities. Smaller blooms bearing QR codes led to “niche” content and unique subreddits. “Roots of success” graphics visually showcased case studies of brands leveraging the platform. 

 

ATTRACTIVATIONS

Escaping conventional thinking to design more impactful and inclusive events rooted in humanistic experience was the thought process behind a multifaceted, thought-provoking activation by Encore at IMEX in Las Vegas in October. Attendees could get inspired in a theater-style immersive experience, dive deeper into event solutions at fireside chats and share their vision of belonging on a marker board. A hologram display, where attendees could instantly become their own hologram, offered a glimpse of next-level celebrity engagement and product demos that are both cost-effective and futuristic.

Visit Orlando at IMEX invited attendees to get their photos taken in a custom-built roller coaster car, with the wind blowing in their hair for that “true Orlando feel.” The easily sharable photos and videos from this roaming photo booth were a hit with the meeting planners chasing their next thrill—an exciting destination for their events. 

This story appeared in the Winter 2023-2024 issue