The bottom line here is as stark as it is depressing. All the time organisers arrange events on the basis of profit, conditions at those events are unlikely to deliver the results that exhibitors and the industry need. Throw in the fact that, from a manufacturers or distributor’s point of view, shows are both costly and time-consuming as well as challenging (in terms of the musical results achieved) and it’s hardly surprising that collective enthusiasm for audio shows is waning, as is the effort being put in. Nor is it surprising that they are failing to overcome the generational impasse, with little or no impact in terms of new, younger customers.
But if shows are an essential outreach activity for the audio industry and the shows we’ve got aren’t cutting it, what needs to change? After all, simply doing the same thing, over and over again and expecting a different result is just plain dumb. Even the most enthusiastic exhibitors are aware that things could be a whole lot better, but nobody seems sure quite what ‘better’ would look like.
Let’s start with the basics…
The purpose of shows can be divided into two basic functions: business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) contact. B2B activity mainly consists of manufacturers meeting their distributors, or distributors meeting their dealers. These contacts have little or nothing to do with listening to the systems set-up in the rooms. They are all about meeting new or existing partners, talking to serious members of the press, seeing and discussing new products, pricing, taking orders and cementing relationships. All those involved know only too well, that the sound on show is too far from what’s possible to be meaningful.
For visitors, it’s the B2C aspects of any event that are of interest. B2C events started out on the basis of their promotional value, introducing or launched new products to the public and potential customers, as well as offering owners the chance to meet the people who built the product that they’d already spent their hard-earned cash on. Back in the day, this was seen as manufacturers supporting their brand, their retailers and their installed base. How things have changed. Not only has the line between distribution and retail blurred to the point that the two are almost indistinguishable, with many distributors who are also dealers – or dealers who are also distributors – but it is now common practice for distributors to sell product, especially more expensive product, directly to the end-user, either openly or out of the back door. As a result, shows have become more about selling and less about showing (at least, less about showing to potential partners). Meanwhile, the move towards direct sales models based on the internet has created a secondary sales impetus, where shows are the opportunity for customers or potential customers to hear product before they buy it, or to meet the people behind the product they’ve already bought. The appeal of that direct customer/manufacturer contact is one of the few historical constants when it comes to audio shows – and it’s one I’ll return to later.
The customer is always right…
So, what we see here are conflicting requirements when it comes to B2B and B2C events – although as we’ll see, there are also ways in which they can be mutually supportive. But let’s start with what would improve B2C shows. One important consideration is managing expectation. Despite years of disappointment, most show visitors still turn up with the unrealistically optimistic hope of hearing great sound. But in too many cases, even if the rooms aren’t a limiting factor, the exhibitors are, unwilling or incapable of maximising the opportunity: designing or selling audio equipment isn’t the same as setting it up, while the hamster-wheel procession of show after show will grind down even the most enthusiastic advocate. Once again, let’s take the MOC in Munich as an example: the rooms are large and behave predictably; it isn’t that hard to create good sound, even with demanding, wide-bandwidth systems (and yes, I’m talking from experience). Yet the number of exhibitors who achieve great sound is tiny, especially when compared to the number of rooms on offer. That it is almost always the same exhibitors who achieve the best results should give everybody serious pause for thought…
