Clients are always asking me “How can we attract people to our booth and get our new products noticed?” In the Pharmaceutical space, Poken has become an ideal tool to answer this very need. Pharmaceutical companies are unique because they have legal constraints on what they can do regarding product advertising and gifts. They also have the need to get scientific and educational information across to a less technologically-inclined crowd. With both those challenges, the Poken platform has flexible solutions. An ideal promotional gift, the poken device cost is below $20, and it provides a useful web-based extension:  Through a custom web portal, visitors can browse confidential information they’ve collected in your booth, with a simple touch.

Poken was a hit with pharmaceutical buyers at the 20th FIGO World Congress of Gynecology and Obstetrics in Rome, where our client drew a crowd as they never had before, boosting their
brand visibility and collecting valuable metrics.

The client’s challenge was this: With over 7000 participants and hundreds of exhibitors, how could he attract people to his booth? How could he get the word out about his new medical product, and gather statistics on what key visitors thought about it? Many companies face the same challenge of getting noticed and measuring success, and trade shows.

Poken is increasingly used at congresses and exhibitions, as the key to unlocking useful information – both for visitors, and for the exhibitor. Clients integrate a download wall into their booth, and place additional Touchpoints around the venue. Participants can register at their booth, exchanging a business-card for a poken, which they then use to collect digital material, answer digital surveys, and collect people and things around the conference.

The benefits to visitors are immediate: instead of picking up paper brochures (which inevitably are thrown away before they fly home), visitors pick up digital session presentations, products information, company documents, and many other pieces of information.  The sponsoring client collects metrics, obtaining an in-depth understanding of what the participants are interested in.  Touch surveys, deployed on a wall of the booth, are the cherry on the cake:  The touch-and-glow is viral, attracting many more answers that standard surveys.  Congress and exhibition visitors  absolutely love being treated to “these wonderful techy sticks that glow when touched to one another, or touched to a digital tag”. Our clients always draw a crowd.

At a typical mid-sized medical exhibition clients typically hand out over 2000 pokens, collecting that many qualified leads.  At Figo,  13,567 digital documents were collected by visitors to our client’s booth, forming the base for a rich report with powerful metrics.  Ask yourself this: How much does your company spend on running a survey, outside of the event context?  Probably a whole lot more than it takes to collect rich data using Poken.

“Seeing excited doctors and surgeons was a memorable moment.” said Haider Alleg, our client.  ”The main objective was to get the word out about our new product, and at the same time get back valuable metrics showing what doctors are interested in, and capture their thoughts on the company and the industry.” The result for this client was amplified when one of the main conference speakers mentioned the innovative use of technology at this booth.

One priority for our clients is often to eliminate the cost of printing and transporting their brochures. They discover that in doing so, they also reduce the amount of work, and the stress, which they used to experience when preparing for their show.  This illustrates just one of the many benefits poken can unlock for your next event.

If you want to check out Poken in full swing, one major upcoming medical conference featuring Poken this April will be the 21st Annual European Congress of Psychiatry, in Nice, France.  Later that same month, in Amsterdam, the 24th Annual International Liver Congress will also see 13,500 participants equipped with pokens to connect, collect, and share digital information.

1. Cost of Printing: When you think of $1

to $2 per brochure, do you factor in how many of those you hand out actually get read?What is the true cost per reader? It’s likely to be 5 to 10 times higher.  The cost of paper has gone up regularly over the past decade, while its effectiveness in passing a message has gone down.

2. Transportation contributes heavily to your printed collateral costs, but is often a hidden cost (both environmental and real). How much did your last carton of brochures cost to be Fedexed to the congress? Did you ship the remains back to your office as well?  Some event venues charge drayage fees, $100 or more per carton to be brought to your booth by a union worker. Factor that in, and you will realize the real cost of those hand-outs.

3. Recycling – If you are organizing an event, you’ve probably already been hit by the shock of those post-event costs.  If you’ve attended a conference or a trade show, you’ve seen the waste: Brochures, flyers, catalogs strewn all over the isles. Guess who pays to haul that away – it’s in your ticket fees.  We’ve seen 18-wheelers hauling paper waste from large trade shows!

4. A pocket full of Metrics is what awaits you when you digitalize your marketing approach. Have you ever watched as a nameless person walked away with your brochure? Do you know where it ended up? There’s an 85% chance it never left the city where you handed it out, most people don’t haul the paper weight on the plane.  Going Green comes along with digital means for distributing documents, making every Touch Point matter, as you know who picked up what, where and when.

5. Share, Send, Spread – all those “S”-words that sound great as there’s no additional cost involved in getting your material diffused past the initial person who picked it up: They can easily send it out to whomever they feel will be most interested in it. Paper documents completely miss out on the spread!

6. Last Minute Edits: Did you know that with Touch Marketing you can edit any mistakes or update the documents you’ve handed out, even after the fact?  Digital content stored online in a CMS (Content Management System) allows you to track who got it, and make sure they have the most up-to-date version of your document, any time they look at it.

7. Planning: What are the operational marketing costs of simple yet critical tasks supporting your paper-bound activities: Who plans the number of brochures to print for each of your products ? How many of each language do you haul over  on thousand miles to the exhibition? Could you save human resources by going digital?

8. Stress: Combining the worries created by shipping delays and forgotten prints, not to mention the critical eyes of your Product team if the tiniest mistake found its way onto a document printed in the thousands, this is tension you can do without.

9. Think Customer: Does your customer (trade show visitor, conference attendee, etc.) want to carry around a big bag full of brochures and catalogs? Definitely not.  Take a look at the guy in this picture: He’s collecting digital documents while holding his china cup.

10. Enhance your Brand, and increase your competitive advantage!  Being Green is simply put one of the most cost-effective ways to improve your company image, leading right down to enhanced employee satisfaction and customer retention.

These benefits and more are felt by the technologically adventurous customers daily. You can read case studies about Afflink, who experienced over 42% reduction in waste and associated energy consumption in one trade show, and about Smart City World Congress who saved over 42’000 conference slide decks from being printed.

( Make sure to check out the event website: http://www.purelifeexperiences.com/Poken2012.html )

After implementing Poken’s Green Event solutions two years in a row, and observing year over year improvements in visitor engagement, BLM increased its reliance on “touch” and reduced its carbon footprint yet again by deploying poken’s unique NFC+ tags as part of a wall-based survey.

QuickStats:

• 2012:  69’023 business cards exchanged, a 35% increase over 2011
• A unique, wall-to-wall “Touch Survey”, was filled in by 95% of participants, providing better voting than any other solution
• More than 30% of participants updated their profile to include social networks
• The Best Networker collected 219 digital business cards, and is now a known influencer

The challenge

PURE Life Experiences brings together more than 1’200 handpicked high-end experiential travel suppliers, private travel designers and the world’s most respected high-end consumer media.

The organizing team was searching for a solution to enhance networking across cultural and professional boundaries. They also wanted to improve the collection of metrics, allowing them to get better insights into visitor expectations, and obtain instant feedback on important survey questions.

 The solution

Equipping participants with a poken for the second year in a row provided an equally exciting, open, and fun environment in which meeting others was a natural and inviting activity.  A digital touch marketing survey, aimed at collecting metrics on the most crucial issues impacting the world travel industry, obtained 1’142 responses or 95% of those in attendance.

 The results both in terms of networking and in terms of general metrics not only surpassed the clients’ expectations, it also exceeded results obtained in all previous years, using a variety of alternative methods which lacked the effectiveness, novelty, and simplicity provided by Poken.

 The Web Portal used by attendees to view all the information and people they collected, and loaded up with valuable event information, was carried over year to year, so participants could re-visit the people they had met in previous years. This added to the fun of reconnecting with old acquaintances and remembering the previous years’ unique encounters. The networking leaderboard has provided organizers with valuable insights into the mavens and connectors attending the events.

Poken and PURE Life Experiences

Post-event, the web portal continues to serve as a branded community hub, making online diffusion of information and online interaction a priority in Beyond Luxury Media’s external communication strategy.     

 In 2013, Poken will be on stage again for the third year, with the PURE team and exhibitors using poken touchpoints to disseminate digital information, helping further their desire to achieve a truly sustainable show.

Following the successful use of Poken’s lead-generation and paperless document exchange tools in 2011, this year’s event repeated the experience and went all the way with a “no paper allowed” approach to distributing presenters slides and conference proceedings.  25 exhibitors participated, replacing flyers & catalogs with NFC tags and using Poken’s CMS (Content Management System) to upload, administer, and measure the spread of their documents.

EIBTM, the leading global trade-show for the meetings, incentives & events industry, will be held in Barcelona from November 27th to the 29th.

Once again, Poken will be present, and we aim to maintain our reputation as the most sought-after booth in the Technology Village.  We will be demoing our unrivaled lead generation & event networking tools, and our staff will be available to answer any questions about the new frontier in digital events & trade shows: Touch marketing. Explore digital voting, document collection & more as we share with you our latest customer success stories, helping events & trade-shows go paperless, and generate the best leads and metrics they’ve ever seen

Try the Poken mobile app
Come to our booth to get the full “touch and collect” experience with our NFC-compatbile devices, tags, andour mobile apps. Everything you collect at our booth will be accessible in your timeline, so that you can review it online, on your phone or in your web account, and spread it to your peers. Download our new mobile app ahead of the show, and regardless of network coverage at the event, you will be able to collect digital information at any booth that uses QR codes. Everything will be neatly stored, in your poken account, for browsing when you get home.

Take part in the experience!
EIBTM offers outstanding opportunities to learn about the latest cutting-edge technologies and services available to enhance your events. Poken will be featured in the Future Event Experience providing subject matter expertise on how Touch Marketing is transforming the event industry.

We are happy to welcome you at the Poken booth (N185).

Poken team and our partners will be available to show you how to generate high quality leads and get unprecedented insights into your participants’ interests, at your next event.
If you would like to take an appointment, feel free to contact us.

Collecting Digital Documents, Not Paper

asking us to prepare all our marketing documents in digital format. No paper allowed! The visitors could pick up our brochures by touching tags on our booth”

“After the show we received the best analytics and lead generation report we’ve ever seen.  We can follow up with every person who picked up our brochures, we know what interested them, and which of our sales and marketing staff they met on the booth”

QuickStats

• Over 36’000 glossy brochures & catalogues saved from printing and shipping, exchanged digitally

• 100 exhibitors go paperless, saving over 1 million sheets of paper

• Networking boosted, with over 204’000 digital business-cards exchanged

• Exhibitor: “the best analytics and lead generation reports we’ve ever seen”

• Green Metric: The first trade-show or event to top 1 million pages of paper saved from printing & shipping

The client

MaxVantage, a joint venture between Maritz and American Express Meetings & Events, is the world’s largest events management company.  Organizing more than 35’000 events every year around the world, 1000+ meeting and event planners gathered in Dallas (TX) on October 26-28, for a 3-day internal trade-show.  This event provided the opportunity to visit and connect with over 100 suppliers ranging from Visitor and Convention Bureaus from destination sites worldwide, to hotels, catering services, event-focused medical care providers, and event technology companies.

The solution

At registration, visitors were provided with a small USB poken device, and also instructed on how to

use their mobile phone to read and collect the rich media the exhibitors had encoded in NFC tags using Poken’s online content management tools.

Over the 2 days of intense networking, more than 204’000 digital business-cards were exchanged.  36’000 digital marketing packs were collected at supplier booths by the AMEX trade-show visitors who included account managers for prominent global clients such as IBM and Microsoft.

Streamlined Event Preparation

Following the instructions emailed to them before the event, the 100+ exhibitors diligently uploaded their marketing materials combining pdfs, videos, photos, links to websites and online reviews.  Each exhibitor had the opportunity to create and manage multiple “touch-points” loaded with their media, which many intend to use at future events.  Poken was praised for the simplicity of the digital content management process and the tools made available.

Touching NFC Tags to Collect Media

Of the 1200+ attendees at the trade-show, 93% created their own digital profile or “Social Business Card” prior to the event, using a link emailed as part of the event preparation.  This helped streamline registration on-site, as most could go through an expedited welcome process to collect their badge and poken.  Using NFC-equipped Samsung phones running Poken’s Android-based registration and lead-generation app, the welcome desk hostesses rapidly validated the visitors’ credentials.

Poken Mobile Event App

During the show, many attendees used their mobile phones to access event information, and view all the people and documents they collected.  Poken’s leading edge, browser-based event app for attendees does not require any download or special authentication.  Many BlackBerry-equipped participants were relieved not to have to install an event-specific app, and still be able to benefit from a rich mobile experience powered by a new technology called “HTML5″ which works on any smart-phone.

Mobile Event App Works on Any Phone

Poken is unique in equipping event and trade-show organizers so that they can include all attendees in the digital document collection and exchange activities, by offering an affordable and ultra-simple digital collection tool.  Whether as a USB stick with Radio-Frequency collection capabilities (and compatible with the latest mobile phones through its support of the “Near Field Communication” standard) or as a free application for smart-phones, all attendees easily scan tags to collect documents and experience a rich online experience.  Beyond pokens and tags, Poken’s digital tool-chest for events includes an online exhibitor content management tool, exhibitor lead-generation mobile app, and a configurable and brandable visitor portal that helps create a community and provide pre-event, in-event and post-event engagement between visitors and sponsors, experienced both on the web and on any mobile phone.

Contact us to discuss your “green” event and lead-generation needs

Checking In at Supplier Booths, for Credit

Afflink uses Poken at its Preferred Buyer trade-shows to allow Buyers to track visits to Supplier booth, gaining credit for connecting with Exhibitors

QuickStats

•  42% reduction in paper and energy consumption measured by the organizer
•  61’000 digital business-card exchanges
•  12’360 meetings scheduled and tracked using digital tags and pokens
•  Green Metric: Afflink can boast being closer to its goal of running sustainable events

The client

Afflink is one of the biggest and most successful member-driven sales & marketing
organizations, linking Preferred Suppliers to the largest group of Distributors found anywhere in the marketplace. Through its tradeshows, Afflink connects its members according to their business objectives, effectively driving purchasing behavior to deliver better results.

More than a “Buying Group”, Afflink has developed a winning strategy that combines leading-edge digital tools and real-world meetings.  Using targeted technologies to help its members achieve their meeting objectives, Afflink has managed to outpace the industry by more than double digits.

“At AFFLINK, we’re always looking for ‘what’s next’ to make our events more valuable for our Members and Suppliers,” says Michael Wilson, Director of Marketing at AFFLINK.

“Giving every attendee the ability to connect electronically removed the need for traditional tote bags, business cards and breakout session handouts, allowing them the flexibility to upload information to the cloud and retrieve it once they returned to their offices.”

Measuring Continuing Education

Using check-in and check-out tags for break-out sessions allowed the client to efficiently track session popularity, and also measure the membership organizations’ continuing education class attendance.  To improve organization efficiency, members are given the opportunity to attend classes, and obtain credit for the trainings.

The flexibility afforded by Poken’s “touch marketing” platform and the use of NFC+ pokenTAGs in conjunction with poken USB devices resulted in a far more effective solution than Afflink had used in the past.  Deploying easy-to-use self-contained, adhesive, pokenTAGs was a hit with attendees and staff alike.

Afflink’s sustainability efforts, through reduction of paper waste and the introduction of energy-reducing technology, obtained them a very favorable mention on Cleanlink!

Collecting Conference Session Slide Decks

QuickStats

• 160’000 pages of printed paper saved through digital collecting

• 44’900 contact exchanges

• Networking boosted across cultural and professional boundaries through targeted incentives powered by Poken’s gaming engine

• 13’600 documents, reports, and votes cast “with a touch”, allowing instant metrics to help enhance event activities

• Green Metric: 19 trees saved

The client

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international organization helping member states manage trade problems by implementing global rules that guarantee a smooth trade flow.

Over the past few years, the WTO established the WTO Public Forum as a major event in which participants from across the globe discuss multilateral trading system issues.  The WTO is present in many countries, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

Digital-Age Networking

The challenge

The WTO Public Forum brings together governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as academics, businesses and students. The WTO was searching for a solution to advance networking across cultural and professional boundaries, and reduce costs relating to printing brochures and session reports.

The solution

The WTO used Poken’s digital content management system (CMS) and NFC tags to turn the Public Forum into a ‘green event’. Tags were used to make digital documents available for pick up “with a touch”, placed to be visible in the main event areas. Participants chose to collect specific reports, and vote for the conference sessions they were most interested in. Altogether, over 13’600 digital documents were collected, saving over 160’000 sheets of paper.

To enhance networking between participants, and especially to encourage people of different “specialties” to meet and mingle, a point-based game allowed participants to collect 5 points for meeting (and pokening) someone from a different specialty, and 1 point for meeting someone from their own specialty.

In all, during the 2-day event, 44937 contacts were made, far surpassing the clients’ expectations in terms of networking.

Member portal, powered by Poken

Poken and the WTO 

The Public Forum 2012 organizers were delighted by the metrics generated at this event, which continue to grow as members of the WTO pursue their digital networking through the user of their poken, and by using Poken’s mobile apps linked to their existing WTO accounts.  Digital documents remain available for collection, encouraging sharing, with the 200-page World Trade Organization “Trade and Public Policies“ Report more easily sent by email after being collected “with a touch”, than shared in physical form.

World Trade Report and other documents, collected “with a touch”

Post-event, the WTO Public Form members continue to receive email updates generated by Poken’s platform about new documents made available in the branded WTO portal, or about new versions of existing documents.   The Poken portal, customized to the needs of the WTO, will continue to serve as a branded community hub, making online diffusion of information and online interaction a priority in their internal communication strategy.

Intel media distributed using poken’s NFC tags

Intel’s IMEC 2012 event was all about numbers: By going paperless using NFC tags and pokens,  Intel’s flyers and other documents were collected more than 62,000 times, and participants exchanged 28,000 business cards digitally – saving more than 8 trees (on average a tree generates 8,500 sheets of paper) and all the associated bleaching, printing, and transportation costs.   Visitors also submitted more than 10,500 votes in surveys set up for instant feedback, by touching 232 tags.

Intel’s use of NFC, in conjunction with Poken’s content management platform, started at Mobile World Congress 2012.

Touch and Glow to collect digital media

Android developers, who accounted for a large portion of the more than 50’000 visitors,  could collect content placed on tags, linking Intel’s various booths to other activities in Barcelona, such as Intel branded bus tours and life-sized Android characters circulating around the venue.

Held at the Anaheim Marriott from September 9-12, the Intel International Manufacturing Exellence Conference brought attendees from every country where Intel has manufacturing plants. Those attendees networked and attend top-secret seminars about Intel procedures and research.

Voting

Inside the seminar rooms, poster boards with five tags on each were set up, labled  ”okay”, “good”, “very good”, “excellent” and “amazing”. Attendees were told to tap their Pokens on the star that best represented their opinion of the seminar. Attendees also voted via more than 70 Tags for their favorite exhibits.

The Tag voting system would yield more than 10,500 votes, far surpassing previous years’ totals of less than 1,000 votes, according to show organizers.

Data from the tags and pokens was tabulated so that the top networker received a prize, as well as the best presenter elected by numbers from the highest-scoring seminar.

Networking Portal, powered by Poken

Networking

Poken’s fun “touch and glow” networking was used to its full potential to help participants mingle: Fun caps were given to professionals of similar roles so, for example, “Rock Stars” could meet other “Rock Stars” from other branches and have instant rapport. In addition, Intel set up bars during a networking night, and each bar was assigned to a single cap; all the “Rock Stars” could find their bar under the “Rock Star” sign and drink together.  The whole “cap-represents-role” idea was a hit.

Intel and Poken

For Intel, security was a major concern – leading to an audit of Poken’s processes and data management systems.    We are proud that Intel has selected Poken as a supplier of event technologies and content management services, giving us the opportunity to continue delivering successfully to this prized customer.

The American Association of Cosmetology Schools (AACS) is a national non-profit association dedicated to developing cosmetology, beauty and wellness as a career of choice through the professional education of beauty students, beauty educators and beauty school owners/administrators.

The association specializes in updating its members with information about new teaching methods and current industry trends through a series of seminars, conferences and conventions held throughout the year.

In this years’ Spring Operations Conference, AACS partnered with Poken to create a dynamic networking environment, and an interactive experience for participants through the distribution of digital content offline. Equipped with poken devices, all 530 event participants could digitally exchange their contact details with other Association members, and collect from pokenTAGS session handouts, power point presentations, and information about products being exhibited at the conference.

The success of the event was confirmed by the 62,000+ poken interactions registered between participants, the 13,000+ digital materials collected from pokenTAGS, and the feedback survey implemented by AACS, which revealed that 98% of respondents loved or liked the “Poken experience” at the event.

To discover how Poken can help you create interactive and dynamic events, visit our new site: www.poken.com.