Hybrid trade fair: content for everyone who stays at home

Who is not at the show, and what they need

A stand team of four or five people represents a company of many more. Behind them are colleagues at head office, sales staff in other regions, customers without a visa or a free week, distributors in markets where the show is little known. For exhibitors flying in from abroad, the audience at home is often larger than the audience in the hall.

These groups want different things:

• Management and head office want to see that the investment works: a busy stand, the right conversations, the new product in front of visitors.
• Customers who stayed at home want to see the new products properly and ask questions, ideally of the same contact they would have met on the stand.
• Distributors and partners need material they can pass on in their own market and language.
• Your own sales team needs pictures and clips for conversations in the week after the show.

Hybrid, in this sense, does not mean a virtual trade fair platform. It means planning the content of your stand so that people who are not there get something useful from it.

Formats that work at a distance

Not every exhibitor needs all six. A small team usually does well with photo updates, one recap at the end of the show and a stand tour video. Larger exhibitors with a launch or a stage talk add the livestream.

Livestream or same-day recap

A livestream looks like the obvious hybrid format, but it is also the most demanding. It needs a stable internet connection on the stand, sound that works despite the hall, someone who presents and someone who watches the stream and the comments. If anything fails, it fails in public.

A livestream is worth it when something happens at a fixed time that people want to watch as it happens: a product launch, a talk on your stand, an award. Announce the time in advance, in the time zones of your audience. Technology, rights and organiser rules are covered in our guide to live streaming from the stand.

For everything else, a recap published the same day is usually the better choice. It can be edited, subtitled and checked before it goes out, and viewers watch it when it suits them. That matters when your audience is spread across Asia, the Gulf and the Americas. A 30-second highlight video plus a few strong photos per day covers most of what people at home want to see.

The stand tour: your stand for people who cannot visit

A stand tour video is the closest thing to a visit to your stand (booth). Your product manager or sales lead walks through the stand and presents the key products as they would to a visitor, in two to four minutes.

1. Film it early, ideally on the first morning before or just after the doors open, when the stand is tidy and the aisles are still quiet.
2. Keep the route simple: entrance, key product, demonstration, meeting area. Three or four stops are enough.
3. Use a clip-on microphone. Halls are loud, and nobody follows a tour without clear sound.
4. Add subtitles and, if needed, a second language version. Distributors pass on a tour in their own language much more readily.
5. Send it personally. A message to a customer saying “this is what you would have seen on our stand”, with a link, works better than a general post.

Video calls from the stand

Some customers want to talk, not watch. A booked video call from the stand lets them see the product and speak to the person who knows it. It works if it is planned like any other stand appointment:

• A quiet corner or the meeting room, not the busiest spot at the front.
• A headset with a microphone instead of the laptop’s built-in one.
• A second person who holds the product or the tablet camera, so the presenter’s hands are free.
• A tested connection, wired or through stand internet ordered in advance from the organiser. Mobile data in the hall is unreliable.
• Fixed slots in the calendar, agreed in the customer’s time zone.

Planning the day: roles, time zones, consent

Hybrid content fails most often because nobody on the stand has time for it. Decide in advance who delivers what: the photographer and videographer produce, one person from marketing selects and publishes, the stand team looks after visitors. If head office publishes for you, agree when the pictures have to be there. Our guide to time zones and show content explains how to plan the handover.

Anyone who appears in a livestream, a stand tour or a recap should know about it. Visitors in the background of a wide shot are one thing; a customer who is clearly recognisable in a published video is another. Settle this before filming, as described in our guide to consent for on-stand interviews.

At Pixer the first photos usually arrive on show day and the complete material within 24 hours after the event ends. Even the Basic package at €990 includes a 30-second highlight video and a vertical clip. That lets colleagues and customers at home follow the show while it is still running.

The short version

Related guides and services

Common questions