Five Things Wedding Fairs Have Taught Us
So we’ve been on the road recently and it’s been amazing, exhausting, fun, boring, arduous and amusing in various measures. More as one for the archives (and for any wedding fair peeps too I guess) I thought I’d round-up some of the thoughts so far. Ready? Go!
Hats Entertainment
1) We Don’t Have Eight Hours Of Nice In Us Per Day
As I write this I’m recovering two days at the National Wedding Show and a mad dash to cover another fair. I’m in that spacy tired zone where irritability is just a CAPS LOCK ERROR away.
It was musing with Staggered Team Member Richard at our first fair in Coventry that we cracked exactly why they’re so tiring – we just don’t have eight hours of nice in us per day.
Fairs require energy and positive energy at that. Whilst we love speaking to readers, you have to do a lot of proactive niceness and for a bunch of grumpy people that requires energy. Thank the Lord for Powerthirst.
NB: Does not apply to Staggered Team Member Dan Woodward who is irrepressibly chipper.
2) Fairs are a great way to learn about the mistakes you made with your marketing
If you wanted to know what’s wrong with your branding go to a wedding fair. You’ll come away with maybe three preconceptions that you spend the entire weekend disabusing people of. Ours were:
- No, we don’t sell stag-dos (but we do know some great people who do).
- We need to explain more what we actually are at a more basic level e.g. on the stand front, or maybe on the t-shirts.
- When we do explain what we are, people completely dig it.
3) Regional variations
There’s a lot of bad things about stereotyping, but after doing some fairs around the country you can completely see why it happens. Geordies are way friendly (but there’s also way more sick on the pavements on Sunday morning). Brummies wanted to talk for a long time. Londoners seem to have some genetic quirk that makes them immune to marketing. Maybe it’s the fact that they go to school/work in a big tube full of adverts.
- We *maybe* need to up our promotional spend
In Newcastle when we gave someone a flyer they said “thank-you” like they were genuinely thankful. In London they would think before even accepting it.
I’m not saying Londoners are rude, because they’re not (some are, but that’s true of some people everywhere), I think they’re just more reserved. I don’t know. Any other exhibs got regional variations with audiences?
4) We love our readers
When you sit in a shed all day, writing things for men who are getting married it can be quite difficult to realise that on the other end (perhaps in another shed) there are people reading it. It was ace to be at the fair and actually meet people who said, “I read your site all the time.” or “I’m a site member.” It made you want to take a photo of them. Hello to everyone we’ve met.
The other thing it made me remember is that what we do is useful and, although it’s probably not for me to decide, it’s even worthwhile. Everyone we gave a flier to (once we’d explained we don’t sell stag-dos but we knew some fine companies who did) was positive about what we did. Loads of them said, “It’s about time they did something for blokes.” Quite a few blokes actually cheered! The brides were often just as keen.
Lots of men then stood around and chatted about their wedding plans, what they were doing for suits, stag-do ideas (kudos to the ex-Marine we met who has an amazing stag-do planned), ideas for wedding invitations, thoughts about favours, honeymoon plans and if we knew why it was that companies didn’t include them. On the last point I could only say that the times they are a-changin’…
5) Wedding fair vs Comic Con
My personal view is that weddings could learn a lot from comics. I’ve, ahem, been to a few comic cons in my time and they tend to offer much more editorial than wedding fairs, but they still have a lot of exhibitors as well.
At comic cons there are loads of different areas where you can go and get different services – e.g. meet the writer rooms, seminars, presentations, galleries, theme rooms, etc. I honestly think wedding fairs would be more approachable in that way, there’s loads of expertise all gathered together and as an exhibitor I feel like I would have been able to offer more to visitors if we could have interacted with them more.
I know quite a few of the fairs are moving in this sort of direction and I’d certainly be interested in doing more of that for Staggered.
BONUS POINT: Data Collection Sucks
Something that feeds into the above point is that I resented the time I spent taking people’s information. I felt like it was wasted time where we could have been discussing the couple’s ideas and giving them help. The annoying thing is that it’s completely easy (and free) to do as well. If there’s any demand from organisers I’ll set it up myself.
In 2011 to be staring at a pile of data input sheets (written in pen! On paper! Remember them?) seems out-dated. At the NWS Hitched (thanks for the tea!) were talking about a set up for the September shows which sounds good but it might mean that you’ll need an iPhone, which not everyone has. Frankly though it could just be that each visitor gets a load of stickers with their details on which they can give to exhibitors. Or even simpler (because stickers still means data input), you do a three step system:
1) Every visitor registers their details (name/date of wedding/role/etc) with the organiser. They fill out all of their data once and in return get a unique number and password.
2) To give their details to an exhibitor they give their number and password.
3) After the fair the exhibitors give their collected numbers and passwords to the organiser (probably on a database) and they get a .CSV file with them all on.
For added goodness maybe every exhibitor would have to abide by a good communications code (e.g. don’t spam the crud out of anyone). The whole thing could be set up in an afternoon.
See you all at Birmingham!
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Leeds folks were genuinely very nice, and as you said, once you get a minute to engage them and explain what we’re about, they quickly get it, and in most cases they love it.
What’s frustrating is when you get people either breezing past, taking one look at the exhib at the end of your row and assuming “this is the chair covers aisle” so they never even come near you (I did a lot of running after people)or worse still, letting you talk them through the whole thing only to find that they’re afraid of giving out their email address.
I swear there were two or three couples there who didn’t stop at any of the stands whatsoever. Strange.
The Comic Con panel idea sounds infinitely better.
This. This this this. I’m nodding like a lunatic.
Point #2 is more-or-less why we did the National Wedding Show for a couple of years, and hope to again. It also furnished us with loads of ideas for developing our service. For example, we probably wouldn’t have put together a “winter honeymoon” design theme if it hadn’t been for two couples specifically requesting one, in person, at the 2008 show.
Thinking about the data collection point there’s just so many ways you could do it, most of them with about a day’s organisation maximum that it makes me think there must be another reason why companies haven’t done it yet.
We London folk aren’t just wary of marketers, we’re wary of everyone, everywhere. We naturally assume you want to stab us and steal our iPhones.
If I knew how to get around this I’d be a billionaire. All I can suggest is, just don’t be too pushy or cheerful (we can smell a salesman from 10 tube stops away). Be a bit cool and pique our natural curiousity… Either that or offer free booze.
Ps. Shan can I have a Staggered t shirt (in size middle-aged-spread) please?
That’s actually not bad advice Pete – I think maybe because we weren’t selling anything at the fair people saw us saying this is a free service and instantly assumed it was an *even* more devious trick to get at their precious golds.
T-shirts. I’m thinking of doing a new one and I’ll send you one of thems. Not sure we’ve got enough of the fair ones (thus making them outrageously rare and collectible).
I think there needs to be some logic applied to the layout – why don’t they put all the cake makers together, all the dress people together, all the flower people together? It would make it so much easier to go where you want to go, or at least be able to prioritise areas of the show one by one. It would also be more targetted for the visitors, and importantly it ups competition so they get a good deal out of it too! Not that Staggered has competition. Clearly.
P.S: I think having stall-holders with good head-gear works wonders too.
I’m framing my t-shirt. Also, I like to think that my particular brand of enthusiasm was a refreshing change to some of the hard-bitten Londoners..
I actually think that the shows should go 2 ways – the local ones should try and get local suppliers all together: At Ascot all the wedding type suppliers from Datchet near Windsor clubbed together and had all their stands together, it was like a mini representation of their town. I think the local fairs would benefit from this approach as people can immediately go to places local to them.
The larger ones need to represent the industry and the leading and bleeding edge – and to be honest Staggered is right up there for that; showing Stags (and Hens for that fact) just how great men are at all things wedding, how invested they are, and giving them both assistance is surely not only our responsibility as an industry, but more importantly our privilege.
I want to go to a comic convention. For research, of course. Interesting idea about grouping wedding suppliers but I’ve been at fairs where exhibitors have complained about being too close to the other photographer / stationer / florist. Fairs are changing though, and it’d be nice to see a more helpful arrangement in future!
And do you know what? A bit of grumpy is good. Because it’s possible to get so used to doing wedding fairs that you can manage 8 hours of – forced – nice. And that’s just not the same. Three hours of genuine enthusiasm is better than eight hours of pretending to enjoy it! The worst part of wedding shows is fake smiles. Keep it real, kids!
I haz the 8 hours of genuinity! Or something.
Loving points 2 and 3 I haven’t done a wedding fair yet but I have taken note of your marketing lessons learnt. As for point 3 yes it wrong to stereotype. But there is a clear trend in products we sell to the north they tend to be more outgoing i.e willy accessories and they tend to buy more of them. But the south they tend to be more refined just sashes and veils. The same go’s for personalised products northern girls seem to be more daring in the messages compared to the southern girls. Perhaps I should to a PHD in regional Hen Party trends.
Glad you liked Leeds – I obviously haven’t been checking my emails as I had no idea you were in town.
Can I suggest that you instigate a tag-team system to help solve Point 1? Time-out from the public (however lovely we may be) prevents over-exposure that can lead to temporary insanity. I used to work on a Help Desk *twitch twitch* so I’m more than qualified in that regard!
[...] fairs. While most of the big blogs have a presence at big shows — Rock My Wedding and Staggered went on a bus tour this year I believe — it’s not for me. Wedding fairs are big business. [...]
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