Canvas

Shameless advertising of Canvas on Thursday 20th November 2008 at 3345 Parr St in Liverpool; the night I run with the 2 Rich’s. It’d be great to see you there!

Business Trade Show Gimmicks and Glory

Today saw all the excitement and joy of the circus coming to town. I’ve been in Manchester at the “Business North West” event of the year. We were treated to a talk from Facebook’s Stephen Haines (Sales Director of Facebook UK) who explained the birth of Facebook with a focus on growing sales within the UK. He explained the novel approaches and thinking of Facebook in regard to customer value, advertising on Facebook and lots of stats about hit-rates, user demographics and the infamous “Huskie Technique” (utilised by an un-named vacuum cleaner company where he had previously worked before Yahoo and Facebook) which we were told is NOT used by Facebook (although I have my doubts). Stephen kept going back to Google frequently through his talk and it felt although given the opportunity, in a year or 2 he’d like to be there (who wouldn’t!). An inspiring talk non the less though of how a 24yr old can drop out of Harvard and create a multi-million (billion) dollar company.

Tomorrow promises a talk from “PR Guru” (who comes up with these names) Max Clifford which I will sadly not be attending due to work responsibilities.

Of course, it wasn’t all business talk and sensibleness, the good old North West businesses were out in force attending stalls to promote their businesses and sell their services to you. I was approached by a couple of companies that didn’t sit right with me for one reason or another. One promised to triple my revenue and all I needed to do was give them £3k in exchange for some of their “ideas”, you will be happy to know that I managed to resist this tempting offer as well as another from a company that charges you to tell you about free events under the guise of a networking secretary of sorts – very odd!

All was not bad though, many stalls were equipped with Nintendo Wii’s and more gimmicks than you could shake a stress ball or a biro at, and here lieth the fun part of today’s blog. Amongst my plunder was:

• Bottle of beer
• Chattering Teeth
• 3 tins of mints
• 6 biros / ballpoint pens
• 2 keyrings
• 2 business card holders
• A yo-yo
• Highlighter disguised as a mouse
• Letter opener disguised as a weird elephant thing
• Mini Cooper stress ball
• Air freshener
• Novelty road sign