There were two floors of exhibitors clamoring to connect with ad:tech's 8,300 attendees. Trying to navigate the exhibitions compared, in noise and crowd levels, with a rush hour ride on a Manhattan subway.
For the most part the tsotchkes were stress balls, scores of pens, sticky note pads, and the requisite t-shirts and hats. I got 14 pens on the first day of the show. The coolest, although not a new idea, was the lava lamp pen from Revenue.net.
There was a clever idea here and there, like the ValueClick passport that had to be stamped by all of the company's eight brands so one could enter to win a free cruise. Too much work for me.
I did not walk away with a single t-shirt, a first for me.
The few standout tsotchkes included Revenue Net's clever LED-enabled personal fan that spells out the company's name. Were the tsotchkes so ordinary, and paltry, because times are so good that nobody thought they had to try too hard? Or is there a dearth of tsotchke creativity among the online set?
Aside from the company whose slogan is, Wanna Be On Top," the "booth attractions" at this year's New York ad:tech show were few and far between. At CPA Empire's booth, a lovely lady dressed in a red ballerina dress with wings was handing out pins with numbers on them which attendees could match with other pins with the same number to win plasma TV's. Not a bad promotion and well worth the excuse to visit the booth to observe and participate.
It's 12:30pm Sunday at the New York Hilton and you'd never know ad:tech New York 2005 was starting tomorrow morning. The exhibit hall looks like a large warehouse with boxes, crates and dollies all over the place being swiftly moved by crews racing the clock to be ready for the 6,000 who will descend upon the Hilton as the show opens.
While checking out the layout of things, we stumbled upon a crew of 20 or so preparing the attendee bags which will be handed out to all who show up. As is usually the case when people do the same thing 6,000 times in a row, things can get silly. Be sure to check out the video in the photo album of the crew singing "Dina Won't Ya Blow" or whatever that song is called.
The two people mugging for the camera at the end of the album are ad:tech Director of Marketing Meredith Medland and ad:tech Content Director Warren Picket taking a break from preparing speaker and press passes.
Below are two "film loops" from Film Loop you can join. They'll be updated with images over the three day period of the show.
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