The Gentlemen’s Expo went well – well enough that they were ready to start planning for 2014 right after the dust settled. Round 2 of the now annual event saw a much larger scope of work. We started in January of 2014 on revising a sales brochure going out to prospective vendors and sponsors.
The Gentlemen’s Expo Sales Brochure
Building off of the success of the 2013 show and utilizing all of the demographic data captured from the show, TGE and I put together a sales brochure with new opportunities for sponsorship, vendor roles and investment opportunities. The big change from last year would be a lighter, fresher branding approach. Switching from a black base to a white base, and giving a little more room for colour accents was a decision intended to lighten the mood around the brand, as well as open it up to opportunities in other demographic areas.
Gentlemen’s Expo Website Revamp
With the updated look and feel, more content to work with, and some learnings from the first year, the next step was to update the website and it’s functionality.
New Gentlemen’s Expo TTC Ads
With the biggest response to marketing and advertising efforts having come through the TTC Ads (tracked via promo codes), Our efforts on the advertising front were redoubled and expanded. The ‘Tip’ ads had such a fantastic response that we revamped the old ads with new branding, and added more into the mix. We also included a ‘Gentlewoman’ ad, as TGE was looking to expand its target audience. While still primarily targeting men, this was a conscious effort to combat criticism of dipping into the ‘manosphere’, an unintended consequence of running a show about men. TGE is about betterment, not about entitlement.
One additional thing the TGE team decided to do was to offer cross-advertising opportunities for sponsors and highlighting vendors. This provided a lot more revenue to get the word out, and allowed us to augment our brand advertising with feature advertising.
Newspaper Ads
Newspaper Ads, though less prevalent this year, were still a core component to the overall marketing plan.
Digital Advertising
We did a variety of social media and digital advertising, including digital screens around the city and take-overs of locally based websites.
One of the other cool features we did for the actual show was in conjunction with a handout schedule, The Gentlemen’s Expo also had a variety of screens around the convention hall with the upcoming features for the nearest stage. Here’s a few of those screens.
