Everybody at a trade show is walking down the aisle at the same speed, avoiding eye contact, and deciding in roughly two seconds whether to stop.
Almost every stand gives them the same reasons not to: a screen showing a loop nobody watches, a bowl of sweets, and three people in matching shirts standing in a row at the front like a customs checkpoint.
Why people avoid stands
Not because they are uninterested. Because they expect a cost.
Stopping at a stand means entering a conversation that will be difficult to leave, with somebody whose job is to keep them there, about a product they may not want. The cost is social rather than financial and it is entirely real.
Everything that works removes that cost.
Let them engage without committing. Something they can do or look at that does not require speaking to anybody. Once somebody has stopped voluntarily, a conversation is easy. Getting them to stop is the hard part.
Make leaving easy. Counterintuitive and important. A stand people can leave is a stand people will enter.
Do not stand in a row. Sit down, or be busy with something. A row of people facing the aisle is read as a gauntlet.
The giveaway problem
Branded pens attract everybody. That is exactly the problem.
A bowl of free items produces a crowd of people who wanted a free item, which looks like traffic and generates no qualified conversations. Worse, it occupies the stand with people who are not prospects while the people who are walk past.
Two better structures.
Fewer, better, and earned. One genuinely good item, given to people you have actually spoken to. It costs the same in total and it means something.
Something sent afterwards. Which gives a real reason to exchange details and gives you a second contact after the show, when everybody else's branded pen is in a bin.
Give them something to do
The most reliable way to stop somebody is to give them a thing to do that takes under a minute and does not involve a salesperson.
The traditional versions are a prize draw, a puzzle, or a physical game. They work to the extent that they are genuinely quick and genuinely optional.
What matters is the shape rather than the specific activity.
Under a minute. Anything longer and people decline because they are meeting somebody at eleven.
Visible from the aisle. Somebody doing something is the advertisement. An activity hidden at the back of the stand does not draw anyone.
No sign-up first. Requiring details before playing converts it back into a transaction and most people walk on.
A natural opening at the end. The conversation should follow the activity rather than interrupt it.
A game on the stand
This is a version of the same idea that suits a stand unusually well, and it is worth being specific about why.
It is visible. Somebody playing something is the most effective draw available, because it is a person having a mildly good time, which is rare in an exhibition hall.
It is short and self-terminating. A one-minute game ends by itself, which means nobody has to extract themselves from it, which removes the social cost entirely.
It creates a leaderboard, if you want one, and a leaderboard produces the thing every stand wants and cannot manufacture: people coming back.
And it gives your team a natural opening. "Did you beat it" is a conversation starter that is not a pitch, from somebody who has already chosen to stop.
The design constraints for this use are quite specific and different from a gift build.
Under a minute. Not five. A stand game that takes five minutes occupies one person and blocks the queue.
Playable standing up, one hand, holding a bag and a coffee. That genuinely determines the controls.
No instructions. Anything requiring an explanation loses people, which is the argument in how a game teaches you to play it.
Restart instantly. No menus between attempts.
The tiers are £99 for a single level and £349 for a multi-level build. For a stand, the single level is usually right: one screen, one loop, endlessly replayable, which is a different brief from a gift and is closer to what what makes somebody open a game twice describes as a score-driven design.
Keep the branding light. A game covered in logos is an advertisement people decline to play. Your name at the start and the end is enough, and it is remembered better precisely because the middle was enjoyable.
The follow-up is the point
A stand generates conversations and conversations decay quickly. Almost every exhibitor knows this and almost none act on it.
The single highest-value change is to follow up within forty-eight hours, referencing something specific from the conversation. A week later, in a template, is a message nobody reads.
If you have something to send, that becomes the reason for the follow-up rather than the follow-up needing a reason. A link to the game somebody played on the stand, with their score in it, is a message that gets opened.
What this means
Remove the social cost of stopping. That is the whole design problem.
Give away less, to fewer people, better.
And follow up in two days, specifically. Most of the value of a show is created after it.
For internal events rather than trade shows, corporate event entertainment ideas covers a related set of problems.
