Kojichu

Everybody loves presents. I guess. But, what to do if there`s no christmas, birthday or any other festival any time soon?
Then you`ll just have to go to exhibitions. Your bags will be full of gifts, I promise. The “Event Promotion Expo” at Big Sight shows the latest opportunities for booth operators, to make their visitors smile.

Keychains and T-Shirts are out – referring to some companies, today you have to give printed rolls of toilet paper, little plastic-ventilators or lightning LED Shirts to the visitors. What`s the point of that? Doesn't matter! It`s for free. And it`s quite fun for a visitor, to be a collector and look for the most interesting „offer“ for goodies.
Booths, which only give away some flyers, often get ignored.

The other way around, some booths with nice give aways get some attention from people, who maybe won`t notice them if they didn't have nice goodies. And again, the psychological trap closes. Some booth operators are quite clever: you can get some booklets for free, but if you want a little gift – you`ll have to pay. With your „meishi“.

Your what? “Meishi” is the Japanese word for business cards, and one of these words you should learn when you do some business in Japan. The advantage for the companies: During the exchange of the card, they can get in touch with the visitors and can say some facts about the product and, the most important fact, they got your contact information.
Today, collecting contacts is very important for the advertising industry, often this information is being bought for lots of money.

So, the price for the goodie is your meishi. You can be sure, that your mailbox will fall apart in the following days, because of so many ad mails. But, hey, that`s not too bad. In return, you had a little figure with a bear, wearing a melon-suit, or an original Japanese fan. So, you can fan some fresh air while deleting all this mails.

A Japanese booth assistant asked me (again) a bit skeptical, if I am from the USA. After I told him, I come from Germany, he suddenly got interested and we talked about Stuttgart and the „Porsche“-factory, where he worked a few years ago (I decided not to ask the question, why a former Porsche-employee now has to work as a promoter for a small plastic-figure company).
After our little talk, he gave me some sweets and a pin that looks like a strawberry-cake. If the booth staff can speak English, they are quite friendly and communicative.

To sum it up: the whole exhibition was more „Japanese“ than the „Finetech“. Lots of female booth assistants, lots of music and light. An interesting trip trough the Japanese way of living and creating trade shows.