Exhibition Copywriting Services | Trade Show Copywriter
Exhibition Copywriting | GE Case study
General Electric (GE) engaged my exhibition copywriting services for the World Future Energy Summit. The international trade show is held annually at the Dubai Exhibition Centre with the aim of accelerating the world’s transition to clean energy and sustainable living.
The brief was to create an engaging story promoting GE’s renewable energy and power solutions to an audience of elected officials and civil servants, entrepreneurs and business representatives.
The project involved storytelling, content and copywriting for the brand’s static stands and digital displays. The project was undertaken in collaboration with creative agency, Imagination, Hong Kong.
What to Consider When Copywriting for Exhibitions or Trade Shows
When copywriting for exhibitions or trade shows, it’s important to keep in mind how the audience will interact with the content. Storytelling is always at the heart of any copywriting or creative project. However, for a trade show like the Dubai World Future Energy Summit, we needed to consider other important aspects.
These included the flow of people, the amount of time they will spend interacting with the booth and stands before moving on and how they will enter, exit and meander through the exhibition space.
Exhibition Copywriting Best Practices
Before ideating on the story direction and content journey for the trade show exhibition, we first took into consideration the following best practices:
Placing Storytelling at the Heart
At a trade show, it’s not enough to simply promote products and provide information. We needed to ensure an engaging narrative was at the heart of the exhibition.
Stories are much more memorable than facts alone, and delivering a strong narrative would make the GE stand memorable long after people had left.
Adapting Storytelling and Copywriting to the Flow of People
Exhibition visitors tend to browse content as they meander through a space and do not necessarily arrive at the “start” of the exhibition or story.
The content on each static and digital display needed to make sense as a stand-alone piece, while also forming part of a wider narrative.
Exhibition Design and Copywriting Working Together
Each exhibition stand needed to provide enough information to be engaging without overwhelming the
audience.
We took time to carefully consider how we presented the information, in particular the time needed to absorb the content of each exhibition stand in a meaningful way without obstructing the natural flow of movement and people in the space.
Crafting the Exhibition Narrative
While the key objective of the exhibition was to showcase GE products and solutions, we wanted to tie these in with a broader story about our cities, the future of energy and climate change.
The narrative for the exhibition was separated into three parts – problem, opportunity, solution – with digital and static stands corresponding to these themes.
Through background storytelling, facts and figures and infographics, we told the story of the energy and climate challenges we are facing today, the possibility of a greener and more sustainable future and GE’s role in getting us there.
Content Length, Copy Format and Visuals
With each exhibition stand, we took into consideration typography, message hierarchy and the copy’s relation to key visuals. As the first impression was visual, each booth presented content in an engaging way to entice attendees to discover the GE exhibition and story.
The exhibition copywriting revealed enough information and delivered an engaging story without being too overwhelming, successfully meeting the project brief and leaving a lasting impression on visitors.
Looking for an exhibition or trade show copywriter? Take a look at my copywriting services or get in touch to tell me about your project.