Author Archive

Brand Your Office: From Small Business to New Business

by Amanda Van Noort

A hair styl­ist helps small busi­nesses suc­ceed? 
It seems as though even day­time tele­vi­sion now under­stands the impor­tance of appear­ance and brand­ing.  I recently stum­bled upon a new TV series called “Peter Perfect” on the Style net­work where a British hair styl­ist comes into small busi­ness to help them give their busi­ness a face-lift.
I was intrigued […]

Marketing Trends: Brand Spaces

by Amanda Van Noort

Use Your Space As A Marketing Tool
Is it a trend if it’s here to stay?
Pop-up stores, brand spaces, lobby makeovers, and all of these new “trendy” words in the mar­ket­ing indus­try seem like a great idea, but are they here today and gone with tomorrow’s next phe­nom­e­non? It looks like they are here to stay. A […]

The Inevitable, Dreadful, Tradeshow Shipping

by Amanda Van Noort

While most of us like to think that with sev­eral months to plan before a tradeshow we won’t rush pack­ages at the last minute, it always seems to hap­pen. Here are a few tips when plan­ning your shipments:

Ship to the advanced ware­house. This means plan­ning fur­ther in advance, but it will save you the […]

Who’s your lobby audience?

by Amanda Van Noort

Some might remem­ber a pop­u­lar 80s sit­com called “Who’s the Boss?” about a father and daugh­ter liv­ing with their boss and her son.  This sit­com was the per­fect tar­get for fam­i­lies on a week­night who were look­ing for a “family-friendly show”. The writ­ers of this show always did a great job of over­lay­ing fam­ily virtue […]

A graceful dismount

by Amanda Van Noort

You just had a great trade show, and now you’re ready to head off to the big recep­tion with every­one else.  The only prob­lem is you also have to get things ready for the booth to be torn down. While it’s easy to for­get this stage of the show, tear down can go smoothly if you plan well. […]

Hot or Not?

by Amanda Van Noort

When I was grow­ing up, there was a web­site called “hotornot.com”.  People thought it was fun to put a pic­ture on the web because then other vis­i­tors would rate their “hotness”. Of course, you could do the same for other peo­ple. After awhile, you had an aver­age rat­ing of how “hot” you were.  People would book­mark the […]

Procrastination = STRESS

by Amanda Van Noort

When you were a stu­dent, did you ever know about an assign­ment for months but not begin work­ing on it until right before it was due?  You knew the con­se­quence of procrastinating…that your chance of receiv­ing a poor grade was much higher…but other things would often become more impor­tant?  Did you ever have to turn something […]

Tips on Technology

by Amanda Van Noort

I learned a valu­able les­son in tech­nol­ogy on the show floor of a recent gamers’ con­fer­ence.  The les­son was not about the lat­est hard­ware or soft­ware, or cheats to the lat­est game. It was about wire man­age­ment and AV best prac­tices.
If you plan on using sev­eral plasma dis­plays and run­ning a lot of wiring, it […]