Looking for a simple, cost-efficient game(s) to draw people to our exhibitors booth at an industry conference. We’re already going to do VISA gift card giveaways ($150, $100, and $50) and I would like to tie these giveaways to a game attendees can play.
What we need:
Budget for the game is $200
Appeal to as many people as possible
Relatively quick - something that takes 4 minutes to play is NOT quick.
Can be easily scored
To play, you either have to give us a business card or sign up on a sheet (actually, will probably make cards for people to fill out if they don’t have their own cards.) I don’t think that’s relevant, but the idea behind all this is to get leads.
We have a 10’X10’ space to work with, so keep that in mind. For example archery is out.
Is this a conference with a technical program? The one I’m associated with has waves of floor traffic during coffee breaks and lunch (we put this on the floor to draw traffic) and exhibit only time after the Plenary.
If it is that type, you need a game people can play in parallel, so no darts. How about a scratch-off lottery card kind of game, with a logo handout (pencil or keychain) as the booby prize, so everyone wins something - and so you won’t have to shlep that stuff back home.
I’ve never seen a real game, even on very big floors. Remember, you don’t want the prospect to get too frustrated.
My two cents as someone that did this kind of stuff for a long time. YMMV.
To be honest, if the goal is to collect as many unqualified leads as possible, I’m not sure a game is your best bet. You want to collect as many cards as possible and there will be a significant number of people who can’t be bothered to play this game - especially if there is any sort of wait. If it’s a game of skill there’s going to be a large number of people who know they aren’t good enough to win and won’t play and if it’s a game of chance then you’ve got people jumping through hoops to basically enter a lottery.
I know the fishbowl lottery thing ( put everyone’s card in a bowl and pick one ) is sort of boring and everybody does it but sometimes there’s a reason for that, it’s a good way to collect a lot of cards… And it’s also easy to deal with the three different level prizes with a drawing - if you make some sort of scratch off tickets you risk the winning ones being revealed really early in the day or not being given out at all. I have no idea how you’d work out the three prizes with a skill game.
IMHO, nothing beats a good giveaway for collecting business cards. Forget pens and key chains, everyone will have those. Food usually works, try giving away full-sized candy bars or snack-sized bags of potato and tortilla chips and the like in exchange for business cards. I also had a huge success once giving away these really bouncy clear super balls printed with the company logo with Flashing LED lights and noisemakers inside.
And I liked the previous suggestion about the mechanical bull although there might be liability issues:) You’d have a huge crowd of watchers at your booth though.
Now all of this is based to the assumption that your end goal is to get as many unqualified leads as possible. Now, if you are targeting a specific subset of attendees ( such as Physicians Assistants that work in oncology practices ) with the hope of drawing them into a lengthy conversation or presentation then all the above suggestions are absolutely wrong and some sort of game starts looking like a better idea, especially if the chance to play could be offered privately and the greater odds would make it a more valuable prize - and you’d know that the prize went to someone you might actually do business with instead of some random dude.
$200 budget for what exactly? This is very very small to do much of anything. Any sort of construction (eg wheel of fortune) will bust your budget already without even talking prizes.
a) How about a lucky dip? - Variety of different prizes, with one “big” prize and many small prizes?
b) Swap name card for a mobile phone charm?
c) Coffee voucher?
How many participants will be at the conference?
One thing you can do if you like is to customise a teddy bear with your corporate logo and do that as a giveaway.
Or a cute key ring of some sort?
P.S - my company does
a) custom printing
b) corporate gifts
c) Copywriting, websites and facebook
We do a LOT of work for conferences and seminars - can drop me a PM if you need to know more.
ETA - doh…I thought I was on a different forum…sorry bout that…
I do this sort of thing about 20 times per year. I’ve found that an outgoing personality (You! Are you saving for retirement? Come here!) and a big bowl of chocolate work best. Don’t get the crappy stuff, get name brand chocolate. They’ll notice.
Of the games I have used the most responsive is the dum dum one. You know those dum dum lollipops? Get a bunch of those, color the very bottom of the stick various colors that can correspond to prize levels and shove them in some styrofoam. Let the prospects pull them and win a prize. Plus hey, free dum dum for them. It works.
Don’t make it overcomplicated, you’ll lose their interest. Simple is best.
The one I remember as being fun and memorable was one with a lock and a big bowl of keys. You got to pick a key from the bowl and if it unlocked the lock, you won a prize. I normally avoid tossing my details into any trade fair booth bowls but that one got me to drop a business card.
Never seen a conference center catering menu I take it. Plus the cost of a required bartender.
Remember the big GSA scandal where people were outraged about how much they spent for coffee? All the event planners I know thought that they got a reasonable price. Conference food is expensive!
There are tons of on-line catalogs that offer these services, which anyone planning a booth should be aware of. They are quite amazing. You’d never imagine there were so many varieties of totes.
You won’t get that many for $200 though, since the discounts kick in at higher volumes, and there is some printing fee. It is usually more cost effective to just buy stuff. We had a raffle at the end of a workshop I ran to encourage people to stay to the bitter end where we gave away a remote control slide changer for PCs and a stereo to PC interface, both under $50. That was a tech workshop, medical people probably would like something different.
Yeah, we’ve done pointers / clickers with company logo printed - for that job quantity was around 60 pieces.
For small quantity like you say, not normally worth it because of the set-up costs for printing of logo.
One thing that we do is offer a sourcing / consultancy service - you tell us what sort of gift you want / what you want to achieve and then we go and find samples for you to choose from, suggest ideas for you.
We’ve done stuff like teddy bears wearing custom t-shirts for a graduation, parker pens with logos, customised lego model, first aid kits with company logo, cutlery sets, “well being kit” (a shoe bag with logo printed on it, stuffed with isotonic drink, snacks and stuff like that for a company sports day)…
Coming back to the topic at hand -
If it is mostly guys, something competitive may work really well - some stuff that I’ve seen would be
a) hammer test of strength (ring the bell)
b) virtual tug of war
c) Punch speed - this you could do with two challengers - if guys are attending together,
But pre-judging here a little - Physician Assistant would be mostly ladies right? (is this true?) - so whatever is done would need to keep this in mind…
