Lamb CMC's most successful BIBA conference yet

The annual BIBA conference is the insurance industry's leading event taking place over 2 days which this year was hosted in Manchester. BIBA 2012 was Lamb CMC's biggest and most successful event to date which saw us designing and building 11 exhibition stands for various clients throughout the hall. Each stand required an individual creative approach to ensure it was as engaging as possible on the day but also tied in with individual marketing campaigns and product pushes. No modular systems here thankyou! Of course our work didn't stop at stand designs with many clients using the opportunity to launch their new brands and marketing campaigns, it was a hectic few months leading up to BIBA but without exception we are delighted with the results for each and every project.

We'd like to thank all of our clients for embracing our designs and all who worked so hard from initial concept sketches through to final stand build - this really was a great event for all who took part.

Below is a brief summary of each of our stands, full details of each stand will be in our work section soon so please check back shortly.

Abbey Legal Protection Using BIBA 2012 as a launch date for Abbey Legal's new product meant that we could go bold and simple with the design of this stand and focus on functionality. We designed a stand which featured a demonstration bench allowing face-to-face presentations of the new online system across various devices. This stand surpassed expectations and looked stunning on the day ensuring a very happy client.

Catlin Our brief was to take Catlin's amazing office environment and bring it into the BIBA hall - a home away from home. We replicated various finishes and features from Catlin's London office including a large coffee bar, bespoke artwork, quality floor finish, lighting and even a full length hanging red acrylic ribbon feature. These all looked exceptional but let's not kid ourselves, the coffee was the draw on this stand and we ensured that Catlin were offering the best at BIBA.

CNA Move over Tom Cruise, the cocktails are on us. The CNA stand was kept very open, bright and inviting with the lure or freshly prepared cocktails. On stand messages were kept to a minimum, and defined separate areas were created allowing for impromptu meetings and conversations. Visibility of the CNA brand was maximised ensuring the stand was viewable from a maximum area around the stand. This was a quality bespoke stand that sat very comfortably and confidently within this competitive area of the hall.

DAS This stand was a lot of fun to produce, more film set design than clean corporate stand. DAS wanted a stand showcasing their business recovery product and how it helps customers to get back up and running after any disaster. We replicated a typical pub interior with genuine working pub bar and proceeded to set it on fire (well, not literally), giving the effect of fire damage. This was certainly not your average insurance exhibition stand and attracted a lot of attention as a result.

Davies Group Our ongoing Remarkable People doing remarkable things marketing campaign and continued sponsorship of Team GB cyclist Andy Tennant has continued to gain traction over the last year so we used this as the focus for this year's stand. The stand was in a fantastic location within the hall which ensured large footfall past the stand, we simply let the campaign shine. Showcasing 2 of Andy's bikes, his world champion jersey and videos of him in action sparked real interest in the campaign and meant the Davies representatives were kept busy across the 2 days.

Heritage This is a real working stand which has already been used in various exhibitions around Europe. We developed it in 2011 to be adaptable to various size configurations and reused the basic structure again this year with updated graphics tying in with the conference branding. We also developed a quick interactive ipad survey which delegates completed on the stand with updated results displayed live on it proving to be a real talking point and hook to starting conversations with passing delegates.

Insurance Times As with previous years Insurance Times were recording live video footage and editing at the event, showcasing their talents and giving a real insight into the hectic nature of journalism. With a limited stand footprint we maximised space on this stand to include interview areas and a private hidden area for editing video which was then included into an updated looping video screen on stand.

MAPFRE Group After the success of their award winning stand last year MAPFRE were keen to keep the same concept and evolve the stand for this year's BIBA conference. We kept the tapas bar theme which reinforced MAPFRE's proud Spanish heritage but opened the stand up by removing a wall and lightened the wood panelling. Again this proved to be a very popular stand with the delegates who couldn't resist the warm Spanish hospitality on offer showing MAPFRE at their best.

NewLaw Solicitors Keen to break into the insurance market, this was NewLaw's first time at the BIBA conference and potentially the first time a lot of delegates would have seen the solicitor. NewLaw were keen to have a stand which pushed their brand and their new NL24 company as effectively as possible. We designed and built a stand which gave maximum exposure to their brand which was well received by all; a positive step for NL24 getting a foot in the insurance market.

NMU All change on the NMU stand this year; they used the BIBA conference to launch the new look NMU with new branding, collateral and a completely new CMS website which is launching any day now. Utilising the stand we built last year we replaced the floor and backwall with updated quality finishes and added a large hanging lightbox above the stand which guaranteed the NMU name was seen from around the hall.

Transactor Transactor is a software company which offers systems that can easily expand as a client's requirements increases. They wanted a playful, fun stand which still reflected the professional nature of the company. We took their logo as a start point and repeated the shape into an organised grid picking out individual squares with various details. It is always satisfying to overhear people around the show complimenting one of your stands and this was one of those examples.

Again, all of these projects will be updated shortly in the work section of our website where you will be able to see much more detail of the stands and various details.

Thanks again to all!

How does your exhibition stand reflect your brand?

Following on from the interest in Neil's recent post about the approaching BIBA 2012 conference (google analytics is a wonderful thing) we thought we would continue with a look at exhibition design from a brand perspective and why it should be part of your marketing budget.

An exhibition show is potentially one of the more exciting parts of your marketing calendar – exciting because after developing your identity and brand guidelines you can focus on bringing your company identity off of the printed page or out of the screen. You are going to have to figure out how to bring your brand to life and represent it in a physical environment. Exhibition design is a chance to make that all important first impression of your company to a potential new lead and doing it well can mean the difference between gaining new business or being overlooked.

Why exhibit at all? 

It can be a big chunk of your marketing budget, planning it is time consuming and it forces your staff out of their comfort zone and into the paths of the masses. Well that last point is the key isn't it – exposure. Exposure, new leads and relationship building all hopefully leading to increased business.

First things first - know your brand

You need to know what your brand stands for before you can ensure that your exhibition presence is reflecting your company consistently. If you've been through any sort of a branding exercise you should know the key values to communicate in order to represent your brand consistently. Your brand identity will of course include the basics... logo, colours, font, image library specifications, etc., but should also include more abstract concepts that represent your brand such as feeling, tone, emotion, etc.

Know why you are there

Consider and decide what your exhibition goals are before you start thinking about stand design. The most successful and suitable stands are born out of considered briefs detailing clear goals of what a client wants to achieve from exhibiting at a conference show.

Begin with an idea. There is a term in architecture, parti – or parti pris 'to make a decision' – which means the underlying concept. It is similar to the big idea in branding; the single thought which is the foundation on which everything else is built. Let's say that your big idea or focus for the stand is accessibility - this informs any decision along the design process by giving focus to a core thought to come back to. A parti is this focus of satisfying the original idea condensed down into a simple statement or sketch of what the aim of the project is.

Thinking about your stand in its simplest form helps focus the development process by prompting you to consider whether any particular design decision is staying true to or enhancing the original idea behind the stand. This can inform furniture selection, floorspace required, brightness of lighting, materials, finishes, on stand experience, etc.

For example, there will be a big difference in the design approach of the stand depending on whether your focus is a simple brand promotion exercise compared to if it is a new product launch. In the former your message may be 'here we are, this is our company, we're showing our face, a dependable reliable showing year after year', all that can be done with a logo and an engaging structural design. In the latter case the group branding may take more of a secondary backseat with the focus shifting to your new product; the group branding sitting in the background lending gravitas and instant recognition to the product launch.

What can a stand say about your brand?

A stand should reflect your brand - if your company is all about investing time with clients and providing a bespoke service to them then build a stand that allows you to invite those guests on, provide comfortable furniture and take time to speak to them. If you want to show you are a busy dynamic company then make your stand a lot brighter with lots of presentations, less furniture and a shorter stand experience time.

Think of your stand as a shop front for your business; it's an opportunity to reflect all of your brand values in a way that you never can do in the reality of your office layout. Perhaps you are based 100s of miles from your potential clients in which case an exhibition stand allows you to take your world to them.

If you think of billboard advertisements - they work on a 3 second rule. They need to grab the attention of passing motorists and deliver a message to them within those 3 seconds of a car passing by. Exhibition stands are the same albeit with slower moving traffic passing through the aisles but the principle remains. Don't bombard people with an essay of text across 3 walls, they will process and retain less than 5% of the message.

As we've mentioned, this is a chance to create a physical presence of your company brand - try to exploit the senses. You're not tied to the visual sense of a website, you can play with lighting, tactile material, aroma, taste, performance and hotwire straight into potential customers sensory perceptions.

Your message can be sophisticated in what it communicates about your brand but it has to be succinct and easily processed by the audience.

Strive to make it memorable past the event. You want to sow that seed in people's heads so that when they stumble across your company in a couple of months time they recognise the brand and recall the associations with your company that you've prompted through your stand design.

Your people

Often in branding projects we are trying to get inside a company's ethos to understand what makes them unique, especially in financial companies where so much is based on personal relationships and the quality of a company's people. Often in insurance companies this comes down to the characteristics of people within that company and the personal relationships they can develop with clients.

An exhibition stand is a chance to bring them out from behind an email address or phone number and press the flesh with potential clients. A stand needs to make your people comfortable to shine, that means giving them the confidence to sell your business at its best. If they are proud to stand in front of that stand it will come across to the attendees at the conference.

As the old adage goes 'first impressions are everything'. To a completely uninterested visitor a good stand will plant a seed. To a potential customer it could tip the balance. To an existing customer it should reaffirm their positive feeling towards your company.

An example to illustrate

Shameless self-promotion plug warning: take one of our clients MAPFRE, a global insurance provider. MAPFRE came to Lamb CMC recognising that they needed to develop their UK identity which meant a full brand evaluation and development project. Once this was complete it naturally progressed into a marketing campaign including a showing at last year's BIBA conference. This was MAPFRE's first showing at BIBA so it was key that they made a bold statement ensuring people realised that they were there.

The brief: MAPFRE wanted to arrange slots of time with a number of visitors throughout the day, they wanted them to experience something of the company's heritage and they wanted their stand to be remembered.

The informed audience of insurance brokers all knew MAPFRE as a Spanish company so we used that heritage as our hook and focussed our design around Spanish hospitality. We took their bold graphic identity and incorporated it into a stand using a combination of branded panels and traditional wood materials (making it stand out within the usual stand design finishes).

It was a small stand space which was a factor we turned into a strength adding to the tapas bar feel we decided to have no large furniture, encouraging visitors to stand and chat. We took the height of the stand up to add a sense of an enclosed intimate refuge within the large Manchester exhibition hall. Finished the feel with a professional tapas chef offering tapas and freshly sliced jamon. Beer on tap. Who could resist?

No walls full of small text, no long lists of products, no branded biros - it's not what people will remember after the event. One simple concept - Spanish hospitality; a warm welcome, good people, good conversation, plenty of food and drink, all in an informal relaxed space. It certainly stood out amongst the other stands last year, so much so that it won the best small stand award and the organisers were still struggling to get visitors to leave hours after the exhibition had finished.

What does someone take away from it? A sense of who Mapfre are, what they're about, what the people behind the brand are like and what drives them - all with their brand subtly sitting there in the background. That experience remains associated with MAPFRE and is remembered whenever that logo is seen in the future by visitors.

To see some more examples of our exhibition design check out our work section on the site - click here. 

BIBA's just around the corner...

BIBA is just 14 weeks away and don't we know it at Lamb Towers - stand designs are plenty, rebrands are being considered, brochures underway, product launches and new websites being born!

It's really interesting to see how BIBA has become a launch pad for many of our clients' marketing drives with a much greater consideration across the board of its impact on their business positioning. Gone are the days of 'We've booked a space now we just need a stand...'. I think this has a lot to do with the high prestige value of a presence at BIBA.

It really is the perfect industry event to focus both internally, and from a client perspective, just how a business communicates what it is, what it wants and what it can offer. The thought, and considerable cost, that goes into exhibiting at the trade event of the year needs to be more than just a place to wave their respective flags. Hence it has become for many, the pivotal event for their year's marketing campaign.

Not that we are complaining. BIBA allows us to focus and capitalise on our clients messages, and communicate those in our stand design features as well as their other marketing platforms. The end result being a consistent message that guarantees success, and more importantly, a handsome ROI. Must get back to the ideas board!

Neil