The Importance of Pre-Staging

0:00 So Sean, I have three questions for you today talking about the importance of pre staging environments.

0:10 So question number one, many of our clients are managing large budgets and they are under immense pressure to prove ROI.

0:18 Why is seeing the environment fully built in a facility before a single crate hits the trade show floor the ultimate insurance policy for ambitious marketers and leaders and their reputation?

0:33 So pre staging, right?

0:39 It's you said insurance, I would say it's also about usherance, right?

0:43 It's we go through the process of designing, talking about the strategy and coming up with the overall concept.

0:51 That's all done essentially virtually through for drawings and renderings and getting everything set up to scale in its totality just provides really the assurance and the alignment for everybody.

1:07 This is what we're going to execute on site.

1:09 It's also an opportunity which is we're often looking at these drawings in these concepts for weeks, if not months on end.

1:17 And it's not really until you get in the environment that you might recognize that, hey, there's an additional opportunity to do something this or actually this feels too tight or you'd want to add something and it's just far more cost effective to do that, you know, under the context of a of a pre stage and prior to the prior to the show itself.

1:39 Gotcha.

1:39 OK, that kind of leads into the second question.

1:43 In an industry where some vendors charge for pre staging or skip the process entirely to lower their initial bid, what are the invisible costs and risks that event planners inherit when their first time seeing the finish booth is actually on the trade show floor?

2:04 I mean, again, you're, you're just foregoing both the assurances that the fit finish is everything that you expected.

2:13 You're also forgoing the opportunity to make what I would say would be a lower cost change by doing it at the pre stage.

2:21 I think that when you were talking about pre stage 2, this means different things to different people.

2:26 You're, you're mentioning the the fees for it, how it's charged.

2:30 Is it an option?

2:31 Is it not an option?

2:33 A lot of companies do that in different ways.

2:38 The prevailing thought around costs and budgets in the trade shows and events world, I would say is, is pay now or pay much, much, much, much more later.

2:51 And so it's really about sequencing the decisions and making the right decisions that could save you a lot of grief, frustration, anxiety and money on the show site, right.

3:03 Everything's just more expensive.

3:05 I mean, and it's crazier.

3:07 Yeah.

3:07 Last minute you're paying union laborers.

3:10 Like the cost just goes exponential.

3:11 Can we do this?

3:12 I'd like to do this.

3:13 Can we do this?

3:13 Is it possible?

3:15 There's a lot of, you know, just sort of decisions that have to be made because it's still about execution.

3:21 So even if you're going to make an on site decision, not only is it going to be filled with some anxiety and and, and higher cost, then it's like can it actually happen at the at the level of execution that we all expect it would because you're working under a totally different set of pressures and circumstances?

3:38 Yeah.

3:38 And so going back to this idea of, you know, different companies choosing to pre stage in different ways in your experience, like I, I know for Steelhead, like we always, it's our own best practice to pre stage, but it sounds like that's not common, but we do, we also have another motivation at Steelhead for doing it that way.

4:01 We guarantee all of the prices, right?

4:03 So, so when we say labor, the installation and desk and and dismantle is going to be X, that is the number We don't do time and markups.

4:13 And so it's our own personal dry run.

4:16 So if we can discover an efficiency or identify a thing, that's that that that elevates the risk.

4:24 The pre stage is as much for us as it is for the client.

4:28 So again, it goes back to this alignment.

4:30 We expect a high level of execution fit and finish.

4:33 We also have to be accountable to the number that we've given a client.

4:36 And so that as a function allows us to do that.

4:40 Right.

4:41 OK, All right, question #3 Steelhead is known for moment based creativity.

4:48 How does the pre staging, pre staging process allow our design and account teams to fine tune critical brand moments in a low stake environment rather than trying to fix it in post during the high pressure installation?

5:03 And you kind of already spoke to this, but can you elaborate a bit?

5:05 Yeah, because there's suppositions in this in this process, right?

5:09 Everyone thinks that, you know, when we even when you're doing floor plan design and orientation in the design process, a lot of us like to think that the attendee walks through the main hall doorway and, and what's the path to our exhibit, right?

5:23 And that's, that we're just, that's an assumption, right?

5:28 And so again, it's it's about being in the environment at scale.

5:35 And I can't emphasize this enough.

5:37 It's not about assembling the individual parts to say, oh, these, these, these are the parts and all of the graphics fit.

5:44 It's too scale.

5:46 It's the relativity of this element to this element.

5:49 What is the what is the journey?

5:52 Because it again, if there's a time to change it, let's change it now.

5:55 We've had examples of full blown pre stages happening in the showroom Outback and we've decided to just change the orientation of all of the demos to affect a sight line.

6:09 That's possible to do it on site, but after you've have all of the like after you're already set up, I mean, it's so expensive.

6:16 And so it's absolutely sort of a last stage in that creative collaboration, right.

6:23 OK, cool.

6:24 All right.

6:24 Well, thank you very much.

6:25 That's good info.

6:26 All right, talk to you next time.