NEW YORK — Direct Marketing services provider DM Group inadvertently stumbled upon a humorous way to drive booth traffic at the DMD New York Conference here yesterday.
Unfortunately, it was the wrong kind of traffic.
“If laughter was our goal, it's been effective,” said Price Anderson, vice president of sales at DM Group, Upper Marlboro, MD.
Employees of DM Group readying to set up their booth in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center Sunday night opened boxes that they believed contained their materials, but were surprised to find African Collectible Statues.
A reported mix-up by DM Group's delivery company resulted in DM Group's booth being delivered to a tradeshow in Knoxville, TN. As a result, an unknown company attending the Knoxville show received DM Group's booth, and DM Group received the booth that was supposed to go to Knoxville.
Making light of a bad situation, DM Group's employees put up a sign in front of their booth space: “We're here! Our booth is in Knoxville.”
Anderson said the sign drew a lot of attention on the first day of the show from attendees who found it funny. While Andersdon was being interviewed for this article, an attendee walking by read the sign and said, “what a great idea!”
“That's what's been happening,” said Anderson, who seemed to be taking the snafu as good naturedly as one could.
“We're getting a lot of sympathy stop-bys,” he said. The sign's ability to draw new business, however, was another story.
“It's funny, but it hasn't generated the kind of leads we're looking for,” Anderson said.
