That situation made me think about a number of meetings we’ve had over the years with people that plan to “make brochures obsolete for exhibitions”. None of them have been particularly credible in my opinion but it’s not their solutions that are faulty as such – it’s the fundamental idea which is broken.
We had a guy come to see us who had quite literally bet his house on his idea of a kiosk where the user would select the brochures they wanted and behind the scenes they would burn a CD with that information on. I told this guy it was a terrible idea and his only hope was to look at the conference market but I didn’t rate his chances.
We’ve had people who plan that every visitor to an exhibition should carry a USB stick which will be provided by the exhibition. They would then insert the USB stick into a device on each stand and would be able to download the brochures they wanted to take away.
We’ve seen other solutions too but the thing that they all fail to recognize is that brochures often convey a lot more than the words and pictures that are printed in them.
For example, if you are a luxury hotel then you may have a brochure on beautiful quality paper with spot varnish (where certain parts of the pages are varnished to make them shiny) and the quality of the paper and printing effects as well as the photography and writing all contribute to make the brochure feel amazingly luxurious.
If you head over to the Rolls-Royce or Bentley websites right now – I guarantee they will look lovely but will they look and feel as fantastic and special as the hard-backed brochure you would probably be given if you go into a showroom? Not even close!
Another part of the problem is that electronic information – whether it is a PDF brochure or an email – is too easily lost under the deluge of everything else. A paper brochure is a reminder of something. It will sit on your desk or somewhere and every so often you’ll find it and think “oh yes, I must do something about that”. You may never get around to it but it still acts as a reminder until you bring yourself to throw it away – which is basically admitting defeat so you won’t do it for a while.
Equally, a brochure can be flicked through very quickly and something may catch your eye. At the very least you can get the general idea of the contents without having to wait for pages to load from a website or render on screen from a document.
Despite the exhibition organisers desperation to minimize the waste – it won’t happen in the foreseeable future in my opinion, because brochures can do things that websites or electronic documents simply can’t.
All things considered, I believe paper brochures are here to stay for a good while to come because although technology is amazing but can’t replicate a lot of what can be achieved with paper and print.
