Photo Leads Enhance face to face recollection

(Ventura, CA) - At the 2007 International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) Spring event on May 20 - 23 in Las Vegas, over 50,000 attendees and exhibitors were registered by Registration Control Systems, Inc. (RCS), and received a secure show badge that included their color photo and electronic lead information.

Never before has a photo badge been produced for a show of this size. ICSC introduced the RCS enhanced photo badges this year, not only to help reduce badge swapping and counterfeiting, but also to increase networking associated with a big face-to-face event. For the past year ICSC has collected digital photos of their members both on-line and on-site at their smaller events. The RCS on-site registration stations were equipped with a small digital camera integrated into the registration process, where capturing a photo on-site most often took less than 10 seconds; the high quality color photo badges were printed five seconds later. “Now that the ICSC Membership database is loaded with photos”, said Marvin Morrison of ICSC, “the number of photos needed to be collected for future ICSC events will be minimal.”



“The high quality and secure nature of the RCS photo badges helped to significantly reduce badge swapping and enriched the overall event experience for our attendees and exhibitors,” Morrison said. “Providing photo badges with electronic lead information and the ICSCgo.com web-site has really enriched networking at our events. This new system increased the effective networking power of everyone at the show.” The 2007 IAEE State of the Industry report states that sales from leads is the #1 way of measuring the value of a tradeshow.

How It Works:

The attendee’s photo is printed on the badge as well as a key for his/her electronic lead retrieval demographic information. Electronic leads no longer need to be stored on the lead management device as they traditionally have been; they can now be collected and managed by each exhibitor in real time via a secure individual exhibitor website. When this option is chosen by the exhibitor, the leads, including the photo of the potential buyer, can be immediately viewed and followed up by any authorized representative of the exhibiting company from anywhere in the world.

The value of seeing people’s faces with names attached is significant, according to the “Encoding Specificity Principle” in Psychology: stimuli may act as retrieval cues for an experience if they were encoded with the experience - and retrieval cues can provoke powerful recollections. Gary Bolton, Vice President at RCS (the company that developed the Enhanced Photo Badge and provided the photo badge registration service to ICSC) said, “ for instance, if one’s graduation year book were printed without photos, it might help you recall some details or memories, but not nearly as much as when each name is accompanied by a photo. It works the same way at networking functions. With photo leads on your computer you are more likely to remember the person and recall more details regarding their needs the next time you contact them or see then at a function.”



Dan Zumtobel IAEE ExpoExpo exhibitor, said, “year after year, I do my best to follow up on my leads as quickly as possible. However, as time goes by I remember less and less about the person and the conversation. With a photo lead I have much better recall even after several months. With this system I am able to keep a list of important potential clients with their photos on my lead management web site to review before the next contact. Then, on the next telephone call, or, the next year at Expo Expo or at PMA, I have a much better chance of remembering why they were important to me and recognizing them the next time we meet. This enhancement extends to the next event and to other show functions, as well as informal meetings in the hotel lobby or the bar. Now, isn’t that what a face-to-face networking experience is all about?”

“This lead retrieval collection and reporting will make a difference in the struggle to make leads more effective for the salespeople and therefore more valuable to the exhibitors,” said Barbara Powell, Kenworthy Management. “This new system can significantly increase the ROI value of the trade show industry,”

According to RCS’ Edgar Bolton, “I believe the flexibility and value of the enhanced lead report with the photos attached will help keep the exhibitors face to face experience of the trade show alive throughout the year. What other lead generation media can give a lead with a photo to a salesperson in the field other than a face to face tradeshow that provides the enhanced photo lead report. It’s a pretty big thing. This has got to make tradeshows more valuable to both exhibitors and attendees and increase both exhibitor and attendee participation in events.”