With international travel restrictions still in place, many trade fairs are moving to online events as a way to provide the international design community with information and inspiration. It will be interesting to see how well we adapt to these new online platforms and whether we can realistically adapt a face-to-face event to an online portal with the same effectiveness.
So, let’s look at two trade fairs – ones we have visited in the past – to see what their online events will look like, and what they have planned.
ISH – 22 to 26 March 2021
ISH 2021 will take the form of a purely digital event and offer a wide variety of interesting features including, for example, exhibitor presentations (products, specifications, videos, contact persons, chat function, one-to-one video calls), as well as intelligent, AI-aided matchmaking with suitable business contacts for lead generation. Additionally, there will be live streams and on-demand transmissions of the programme of events, as well as an appointments system for online meetings with exhibitors. All features will be available worldwide during the event around the clock and across all time zones.
Wolfgang Marzin, President and CEO of Messe Frankfurt, explains: “Over the past months, we have done everything possible to ensure that ISH 2021 can also be held as a classic trade fair with personal encounters. Unfortunately, the latest pandemic developments have led to growing uncertainty among both exhibitors and visitors. Coupled with the renewed tightening of official and corporate travel restrictions, this means it is no longer possible to hold ISH as a physical event offering the customary high standard of quality. Therefore next year, as an exceptional measure, there will be an exclusively digital ISH, which will be the industry’s central virtual platform for business and exchange of information. Here we shall be able to bundle all exhibitor activities and link them with our own facilities in an intelligent way. We will contact the exhibitors very soon with an interesting package of services, as well as activate our international sales networks to attract visitors.”
For more information or to register your digital attendance visit ish.messefrankfurt.com/frankfurt/en
Interzum – 4 to 7 May 2021
The Interzum digital platform’s goal is to maximise overall reach in the current situation: developing new international contacts is just as important as maintaining contacts with existing customers. Besides networking, interzum@home will focus on products and insights as well. The digital exhibitor showroom, appearances on the Product Stage, round tables and virtual cafés are just some of the many possibilities for presenting products and solutions, knowledge and trends. Even in the face of the corona pandemic, this ensures interzum will reach a global audience – and therefore also decision-makers and opinion leaders on every continent on Earth.
“In these extraordinary times, Koelnmesse’s interzum@home offering provides us with an optimal way to bridge the gap until interzum 2023. That’s very welcome from the industry’s side. The digital platform enables us to present our products and innovations to a broad audience and thus achieve maximum reach, even if it certainly can’t replace a physical trade fair,” says Dr. Andreas Hettich, chairman of the interzumadvisory committee. With Hettich, Blum, Häfele and Vauth-Sagel, the first market leaders have already announced that they will be presenting their new launches digitally on interzum@home.
For more information or to register your digital attendance visit interzum.com/
