It’s All In The Game
Custom Interactive Games Add Excitement To Trade Show Exhibits
by Mark Fowle, General Manager, SIGNAL-INNOVA, Signal Hill, CA

 “I’ve got a problem,” are often the first words spoken when a call comes in to Innova. Of course, these words are music to our ears since Innova designs solutions -- specifically, we apply technology to solve marketing and communications problems.

This time the call came from Mitchell International, San Diego, CA, a large publishing company providing a wide variety of products and services to the auto body repair industry. For an upcoming major annual trade show, Mitchell contracted with ExhibitGroup/Giltspur, Cypress, CA, to design and build an attractive, multi-faceted booth. To engage industry attendees and familiarize them with Mitchell’s products, the company’s director of marketing communications envisioned an exciting interactive game with Mitchell windbreakers and other giveaways as prizes.

Mitchell wanted the game played on a touch screen kiosk with a video wall to generate excitement among attendees waiting to try their luck. Muse Presentation Technology, Santa Ana, CA, easily handled the sophisticated A/V hardware requirements -- a 9' x 12' video wall and a 15" LCD touch screen monitor.

Finally, they needed The Game -- not just any game, but one which would be simple, challenging and fun, attractive, and focus attendees’ attention on Mitchell’s products and services.

Mitchell wanted the game played on a touch screen kiosk with a video wall to generate excitement among attendees waiting to try their luck. Muse Presentation Technology, Santa Ana, CA, easily handled the sophisticated A/V hardware requirements -- a 9' x 12' video wall and a 15" LCD touch screen monitor.

Finally, they needed The Game -- not just any game, but one which would be simple, challenging and fun, attractive, and focus attendees’ attention on Mitchell’s products and services.

For help with this unique project, Mitchell was referred to Innova through their personal contact at an exhibit design firm for whom we provide interactive technology services. Fortunately, the time we were contacted, the client had a good idea of what they wanted for a game, saving valuable time and expense. The game definition phase can take months if the client has not already identified the basic game play. We were given just over a month.

On the video wall, Mitchell wanted a sequential memory game using the company’s logos and product graphics. While video walls are programmable, the solution in this case was to have the game running on a PC hidden in the player kiosk, feeding video signals to both the LCD touch screen and the video wall.

Keeping with the three-by-three configuration of the video wall, we determined that we would incorporate nine different Mitchell logos and graphics into the game play. Our first challenge was a visual one -- how to attractively and consistently present nine assorted shapes, colors and proportions of logos and images provided by Mitchell. We solved this problem by designing a neutral colored background of nine panel buttons corresponding to the nine video wall screens.

Technical Considerations
 Could the client have used off-the-shelf software? Clients trying to save money ask us this question periodically. Unless the exhibitor is a software company demonstrating its own products, use of the off-the-shelf game software is generally a case of penny-wise, pound-foolish (not to mention legally risky without licensing arrangements).

 Participating in a trade show alone is a costly proposition, with the cost of custom booths often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Use of untargeted, off-the-shelf software could dilute the exhibitor’s efforts, while Innova’s custom solutions provide our clients with identity and control. 

Identity
 The primary goal of having interactive or participatory elements in a trade show booth is to have the attendees become engaged with and make a connection to the exhibitor’s company or product. In the Mitchell booth, attendees willingly and repeatedly viewed the company’s images in a positive, enjoyable environment. This is the kind of repetition advertising strives to achieve by burning in a company’s identity on the minds of a target audience.

Control
 If you have ever waited for a kid playing a demo game in a store, you can appreciate the need for control of a game in a trade show environment. If a game has an average playtime of five minutes, you would have less than 100 players over an 8-hour period. A one-minute game would give you nearly 500 players in that time. Custom games can be tailored to the trade show environment and give players of only a few seconds a sense of accomplishment, as well as allow better players to go further, but within limits serving the exhibitor’s needs.

Other issues of control come into play when the winners are given some sort of reward. For the Mitchell game, Innova programmed the “winner level” to be adjustable on-site so that it is achievable for the exhibitor’s audience (i.e., there is a winner from time to time) and yet not so many as to deplete the supply of rewards.

Speaking of rewards, there are many for anyone involved in planning a custom game such as Mitchell’s as part of a trade show booth. We knew we had a winner when we tested the game on our staff, kids and visitors -- and couldn’t get them to stop playing! Everyone had fun and everyone learned a little more about Mitchell in the process.

Seeing a line of people waiting to play the logo game at the Mitchell booth was the exhibitor’s dream, as well as its reward, for having the vision and courage to innovate. eb