This week I spent a day at the DMDays conference in New York.  This was a conference that we had exhibited at for many years up until 2007. The show is much smaller than it used to be, but it was still nice to see a lot of familiar faces and visit with some new digital marketing companies. It was also a reminder of why we stopped exhibiting at the show.

I can remember the last DMDays show we exhibited at vividly. We were at our booth greeting people who walked around and realized that almost all of them were exhibitors themselves. The conversations always started like this; “so what do you guys do”? Or, “How is traffic for you guys”? It was painfully obvious that attendance had fallen sharply and the show was, well, dead.

Trade shows are a great way for us to interact with new prospects and hire good Live Talent to show off some of the cool projects we have done. I used to love meeting the people and watching their faces as I showed them how the latest design or technology worked. However, at some point the investment became far greater than the reward and that realization came during that last show.

Let’s consider for a moment what is involved in exhibiting at a trade show in New York, specifically the Javits Center, where DMDays was held up until this year. The fairly high exhibiting fee is just the beginning. We had to ship our booth by pallet to a holding center in New Jersey, then pay the DMA’s own “logistics partner” to bring it to the Javits Center. From there, we had to pay the Javits staff to fork lift it over to our booth. So how much does a fork lift ride from the loading dock all the way to our booth slot 100 yards away cost? Roughly, $225. Then of course there is electricity cost for two days (about $150) and cleaning services (about $100). And if you should need to rent anything like a chair or lamp, they will gladly provide that at roughly three times the cost of actually buying one. That’s no exaggeration.

We used to joke that the reason they can charge these fees and get $4 for a water bottle, or $15 for lunch is because it’s all fake money. When a trade show staff is expensing everything it really doesn’t matter, does it? So the end result is less small companies attend these shows and many larger companies simply scale back their trade show calendars as we did.

Getting back to New York, I was thrilled that they had finally moved the show from the Javits to the Hilton. It’s much easier to get to the Hilton in midtown Manhattan and for the exhibitors, everything is just a bit cheaper. I wish the DMA had listened to their members years ago when they complained about ridiculous fees from their logistics and services partners and of course the poor service that usually accompanies those fees.

When I was walking the floor at the new DMDays show I was remembering what it used to be. I was remembering the hundreds of exhibitors that came and the thousands of visitors the show once attracted. There’s no doubt that trade shows have been hit hard by a suffering economy and greater internet technologies allowing industries to interact like never before. But I also feel like they have grown into this big bloated industry hell-bent on taking advantage of companies, all in the name of being a part of an “important industry event”. For me, I will miss meeting a lot of people in the industry that I have come to know, or shaking hands with our clients and prospects that I only know by name. That was all a lot of fun. But for the cost of train fare and an exhibit hall pass, I’ll enjoy being a spectator.