Paris, September 11, 2012 – Meeting in Stockholm last week, UFI’s Marketing Committee selected the winner of the 2012 UFI Marketing Award. This annual competition honours “the best marketing activity of the year” in the exhibition industry.
This year’s winner is Freeman whose “Your Freeman” programme created a holistic experience to develop more awareness of their complete portfolio of exhibition services and reinforce their positioning as a provider of integrated exhibition solutions.
Organizers, venues and service providers were invited to share their innovative programmes covering a successful marketing activity or campaign with clearly proven quantitative and qualitative results in 2011/2012. The four finalists chosen for this year’s final elimination round in Stockholm were Amsterdam RAI (Netherlands), Freeman (USA), Kintex (Korea) and Palais des Congrès de Montreal (Canada).
The winning Freeman concept established an exhibition booth with the customer at its core. The booth space provided each visitor with sound, colour, lighting and projection options providing each visitor with unique interaction opportunities. Touch screen displays and tablets allowed attendees visiting the stand to take self-guided tours through Freeman’s brand pillars: strategy, creative, innovation and logistics. To intrigue attendees a video invitation was created and sent via social media channels to target customers. The video featured Freeman employees, specially trained for their stand participation, which were then available at the booth to welcome visitors. A follow-up video was sent to those who visited the stand, thanking them and inviting them to learn more at the Freeman website.
UFI committee Chair Christian Glasmacher (Koelnmesse GmbH, Germany) noted that, “our exhibition industry should take a close look at Freeman’s programme. We are sometimes the worst exhibitors when it comes to showing off the clear benefits and value of our exciting face-to-face marketing medium. This winning programme shows us how we should put our best foot forward when we participate as exhibitors ourselves!”
Left to right: Christian Glasmacher, Chair of UFI’s Marketing Committee, Freeman’s Molly Casey – VP Brand Marketing, and Tom Yurkin – VP Creative.
UFI is delighted to honour “The Milton Graduates Trainee Programme” (MGTP) as the winner of the 2014 UFI Education Award. The selection of the MGTP programme recognizes that operational efficiency and creativity can indeed go hand-in-hand. Enrica Baccini, Chair of the UFI Education Committee, applauded the high level of the entries received, adding, “The continuing education and training of exhibition professionals remains a critical issue for organizers, venue managers and service providers around the world”. The quality of the projects submitted for the second UFI Education Award competition was outstanding, highlighting a variety of very different initiative options.
Milton’s training programme combines a results-oriented educational programme with hands-on training activities. Eddie Choi, Executive Director of Milton, summarizes this initiative, saying, “At Milton, talent and innovation are the most employee important assets. They not only interconnect, they also closely tie-in with our corporate development. We believe that great talent produces a productive and creativity working environment. The objective of our training MGTP programme is to develop what we call the “T-Shape” people. That is, we provide general business skills to our trainees horizontally while at the same time offering speciality training in such areas as architectural engineering, event planning, and media marketing to them vertically. At Milton we consider innovation to be the essence of our business proposition. Our passion defines our drive to bring innovation to the exhibition community. To make this passion become a reality, the MGTP programme serves as our cornerstone for success.”
Choi welcomed the UFI Education Award saying, “We are honoured that our programme was voted UFI’s 2014 winner. This is a tremendous endorsement of our vision and hard work.”
Through its annual programme of education, ICT, marketing, operations, sustainable development and art of the fair poster competitions, UFI recognizes notable achievements in the field of exhibitions. Milton will receive their UFI Education Award trophy before an audience of industry leaders at the 81st UFI Congress in Bogota in October 2014.
