Let’s clear something up straight away: a strong message and the history of your company are two very different things. History is about who-what-when, while a message is about why and how. A strong message reflects the motivations and inspirations - it’s the story of how your company is different (and better than) other companies.

Typical for a strong message is its distance from the numbers, data and hard facts. Instead it’s got positive emotionally loaded elements that are connected in a logical manner. The more connections between these elements, the greater the chance that the understand-memorise-reproduce process goes off without a hitch.

Your stand, much like other communication media, help bring across your message. So your stand has three purposes:

Structuring: Most things you want to convey to visitors are made up of multiple elements. Just like in a fairytale, you need a storyline: a logical segway from one element to the next. The storyline is compulsory: it brings structure and explains why things are what they are. At the stand, structure is added via the information that each zone creates for certain themes, by switching between various types of media (products, displays, live explanations by the team) and by creating a logical cohesion.

Toying with emotions: Check out some Bertolli ads on YouTube. Rather than focusing on the rational elements - olive oil contains lots of unsaturated fats and is therefore healthy - they toy with emotions: ‘roguish’ senior citizens and brazen old folks playing pranks and instigating mischief. This endears us: someday we’ll be just as elderly and hopefully just as vital. That endearment makes the details more memorable. At the stand, visuals and light are used to emotionally load your brand.
Large visuals featuring people reach different parts of the brain and create positive associations with your product or service.

Intact dispersion: Stories create order in our chaotic world. Because they are easy to reproduce, stories are an excellent way of relaying information without any distortion from one individual to the next. To ensure your message leaves the stand intact, the stand design has to be in sync with the other media being used. Not just the look & feel but also the content and structure.