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Antonino Valenti, a trade fair consultant and a marketing specialist for over thirty years, guarantees that physical trade shows will continue to exist as far as they focus on segmentation and choose to invest in niche markets: “Trade fairs need to sell contacts and not square meters”.
According to Antonino Valenti, “the fairs need to be readjusted” through “segmentation and by promoting a specific type of product”. “Space is not the most important; fairs need hypersegmentation”.
On the other hands, trade shows are essential when it comes to brand promotion, which in many circumstances represent cities or regions. That is why, he says, ending a fair is not just that: it is also undoing the image of what is associated with it – which doesn’t benefit anyone.
However, in difficult times like the ones we are living right now, it is possible that not all of them can remain active. For Antonino Valenti, the fairs that have “a more developed and bolder marketing plan are the ones that will survive”. And predicts: “The results of the fair’s next editions will not be very good due to the pandemic, but if the planners and the companies organize themselves, they will achieve a better and faster adjustment”.