Atlanta vs. Nagano

Comparisons between the CTIA show that just wrapped up in Atlanta and the Winter Olympics that just wrapped up in Nagano are inevitable. Well, maybe not inevitable. More likely improbable, but here goes anyway.

Observing attendees maneuver the more than 700,000 square feet of exhibit space in less than 19 hours was not unlike watching ski jumpers finesse their way through a mountain of moguls in less than 25 seconds. The difference is the ski jumpers were allowed to dress more comfortably.

Product placement, as usual, threatened to overshadow content. In Japan, the athletes were frequently indistinguishable from each other for the sponsored attire that adorned them. In Atlanta, unique technology offerings were often lost amid the inevitable hypertainment designed to attract quantities of attendees.

The elaborate machinations of the Monday morning General Session are just like the Olympic opening ceremonies without the costumes and the Olympic flame. (Although that flame isn't a bad idea if convention centers would slacken their fire codes.) Am I the only one who thinks Tom Wheeler should host a weekly television series? Sam Donaldson could be his first guest.

Competition drives innovation. Nagano: clap skates and the quadruple jump. Atlanta: multiband/multimode handsets and location technology.

Even naysayers are in awe of the souls of these machines. For every Tonya Harding, there is a Picabo Street to soften the Olympic cynics. And for every weathered exhibitor who thinks the size of the CTIA event now steals from its effectiveness, there are two dozen relatively new companies who are stunned by the caliber of contacts they have made.

So you see, not such an improbable comparison after all. Of course, the Olympics has one thing going for it that the CTIA show does not: The king of all winter sports events is ideally timed. The king of all wireless events is not.

As a CTIA Wireless '98 attendee (and a recent study of ours indicates that one out of three of you attended this event), you may not be aware of the ponderous effort that vendors pour into an event of this importance. But in some ways subtle and others not so subtle, you benefit from this effort. Timing has a lot to do with it.

Because this year's CTIA show was at the end of February, significant marketing deadlines loomed in the midst of the holiday season. (For the record, things weren't much better when the 1997 and 1996 CTIA shows hit in the first week of March.) Here is the inevitable string of events. Vendors pour money and time into new product R&D. They plan elaborate launches at CTIA, because that is the place for debuts. Then it hits them: Deadlines for marketing programs -- direct-mail, advertising, pre-event sales calls -- hit right when their organizations go into slow motion. Think about it. Does your company operate at 100% in December?

Did you encounter a lot of tired, distracted sales and marketing representatives when you visited exhibits last week? It wasn't entirely the Atlanta nightlife; they'd just reached the finish line of a 6-week run to the show -- a sprint, actually, necessitated by the timing of this event.

Did you feel as prepared as you possibly could be for the new products you encountered? If not, it wasn't necessarily because you weren't paying attention. It was because vendors didn't have the appropriate window in which to reach you before the event.

In all fairness to CTIA, lugging around the behemoth that its annual show has become is no simple task. You can't take more than 600 exhibits to anyplace at anytime. Most cities don't have enough taxis, let alone hotel rooms, to bear the weight.

But when it comes time to negotiate for future dates, why doesn't CTIA flex the muscles it has developed and wrest a better location on the calendar? Although it doesn't have to become the Summer Olympics of trade shows, CTIA would be doing the entire vendor community a marketing service by opening that window of opportunity.

If you have an opinion you would like to share on this subject, write darren_sextro@intertec.com.