 brand perception is malleable and that's that is a major opportunity to change how the market perceives your brand. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales and outperform your competition. All right, everybody. Welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, alongside my co-host, Beth Palmdy Glove. We've also got Steve Coffey here with us. We are out within hours of getting off the plane from IBS and want to share some initial thoughts, feedback and who we think are the biggest winners and losers at IBS. Beth, you were everywhere. I think you probably had the most steps out of our entire group. I actually think we should have a tracker next year. What were your steps? My second day, I think I topped 18,000. I had 14,000, so you beat me. I had 18,000 on my second day. First day, I didn't hit quite that high, but... That's impressive. That's impressive. By the way, for those of you that don't follow Beth on Instagram, you need to go find her. I think she's the only Beth Popmickle love in the world. Not only on Instagram, but in the world. She lit up Instagram in a very cool way during IBS. I highly encourage you to follow her. I want to hear from you just initial takes. What were the things that stood out to you that were really profound or that you think were interesting trends that happened in IBS? We've all said it, but I'll just say I think this was the best builder show in recent memory. The energy level was so high. It was hard not to have a good time, but it was an awesome time. First of all, winners is everybody. A couple of things that stood out that we talked a lot about and had conversations either with manufacturers or as our Venvio team debriefing at the end of the day. Two things were really big is one, in a bigger way this year, I saw builders show exhibitors show up for experience with your products. That's usually something that is left to K-Biz and it's something that we've advocated for. I think if you even go back to our recap from last year, that was one of the things that I was like, I really want to see builder show step up their game when it comes to experience and not just letting your customers see your products. That was something that we really saw people take a shift towards from the builder show aspect and I think it had a really big impact. There were booths that were doing an incredible job without having really highly aesthetic products like Huber's slash zip systems slash advanced tech. Their booth was absolutely one of the standouts. They have a hidden product in the completed built environment. You could never see it. Their booth was a 10 out of 10 when it comes to experience. I mean, I took so many people by there, but I would have meetings. I'm like, this is great. Your booth is fine. Have you seen Huber's booth? It was so revolutionary about how they were showcasing a hidden product. I would say similar things for like Simpson strong tie did a great job of showing their product. That's basically a hidden fastener, but they showed it in a built environment. I mean, there was just a ton of non aesthetic products that really went the extra mile of showcasing how they impact the built environment and giving their customers a very cool experience that was memorable and not a commodity. What about you, Steve? So I like, I like IBS just in terms of shows. I've always enjoyed IBS the most because of the energy that's in the room. There's a lot of shows that are well attended, but IBS, I think they topped out at what 70,000. It felt like 150,000. It definitely felt like 150,000. It was an entryway in between two of the major halls and it was literally shoulder to shoulder and pushing your way through the crowd. So for that reason, there's typically always a lot of energy, but I like to get a feel for where the industry is at this show because when you talk to that many people in that short of a time, sales reps, organizational leaders, all of the, even the builders themselves, the architects, you get an idea of how people feel and then how companies are actually doing. And to me, that's very, very important to keep that pulse on the industries is to attend a show that is as well attended like this. But I also ask questions and I just, I want to know and I want to know where people are. So I think I walked by every single booth, if not twice, at least once and that's what I like. So I think when you look at what makes a good booth, you could go down through very common factors such as, is it visibly appealing? Is the branding displayed accurately? What's the engagement like when you walk through the booth? Because a lot of times you can walk through a booth and not nobody speak to you. I like to just walk through the booth, just walk through the middle and see if somebody reaches out to you. And then I think engagement is important. And then I think relevance is also important. Is the booth and the product, is it catered towards the audience that's going to be at this show, mainly builders? And then I think innovation as well, how are they making them, their brand and their products stand out from the crowd. So if you look through those different factors, you can qualify a lot of different booths that way. I also like to look at how a company is positioning themselves within the marketplace at a show like this. So are they creating buzz? So I was thinking, Zach, you and I had talked a little bit, and Beth, I think you and I had talked about Kohler's booth a little bit as well. And I was thinking about it after our conversations. If you had taken Kohler's name off of their booth, there would still be shoulder to shoulder in that booth. There were so many different things that you can do inside of it. So if a company is just relying on their brand name to pull me in, that's great. But what else do you have around the booth? Is it relevant to who I am as a builder? What's the functionality of the booth? Is it easy to come in and out of? And then what's the visual appeal? So if you're standing on the outside of Kohler and you look inside, it's a party in there. I mean, you want to be in there, it's shoulder to shoulder. There's not only espresso and chocolate, but there's all the other neat features, water features that you can hear the water from four or five booths away, which is quite a lot of square footage. So there's a lot of different elements that I look at as to what makes a really good booth. And I find that the energy that's at this show is something that should be taken advantage of. So I learned a lot this show just in speaking to different brands and individuals. I learned a lot. And I honestly, I feel very confident about the industry. I feel very excited to be a part of it. And not only from Vinvio's side to be a part of the momentum that we can build for brands, but also to be where we're at position because builders are building, right? I was standing in one booth and there was a builder that came up and asked the rep right next to me. He said, Hey, I've got a project. It's going to be about seven, eight years, maybe longer. I've got, you know, five or six, four million dollar homes. I'm just looking for this specific product and what information you have on it. So I mean, that guy, he was, he was booked for seven years, right? He's building some big homes. So, you know, it was very exciting to be at the show this year. Zach, what about you? You mentioned Kohler and you and I were talking about the Steve and Beth, you mentioned this too with his experience. Yeah. There's two things that stand out to me at the show is that the brands that I think one were the brands that you could walk into the booth and have an aha moment without talking to a person. Oh yeah. Like GAF, I think did a really good job at this. Like if you walked in GAF's booth, they had this really neat display of how they're recycling and reusing a lot of the materials to create a more sustainable roofing industry and hearing them talk about that was really neat. But you could walk on the booth and go like, Oh yeah, like I see what they're doing. And they're also showcasing some of their, you know, solar panel roofing material, which is really neat, but you didn't have to explain to me the point of the booth. It's kind of like an advertisement. If I have to sit over your shoulder and explain the advertisement to you that's on a piece of paper or in a magazine, it doesn't work. And I think that sometimes manufacturers miss that, that if I have to explain what it is, you're going to lose people. So I think a lot of people did that really well. Like I also think about the number of people that did demos, but did demos in a really interesting way. Like they had timers and they showed you how quick you could do something. And so instead of saying like, you can install this really quickly, they had like a competition. And so to your point, that I think the experience component, I think the ease of understanding the product and back to Kohler, I think what Kohler did that is a really good inspiration for everybody is they did things in their booth that got people talking. So for those of you that didn't go, or maybe you did go, you didn't see it, Kohler had on the edge of one of this monstrous booth, they had toilets that were different colors. It was like these like bright pastel colors, like something you might see like in the late 60s or 70s, but it's kind of coming back into fashion. And I'm waiting in line for a coffee and I see these toilets and a woman comes up to me and she says, Hey, do you want to vote? And I was like, vote for what? And she's like, Oh, we'll take a sticker and after you get through and get your coffee, go pick out which color you like the most. Because whichever one of these colors gets, gets chosen or gets the most votes, we're actually going to put it into the market. So I was like, Oh, that's really interesting. And so then I went and I voted for this pink toilet. And I took a picture of all of the toilets. And I sent it to my, my wife's family because we have like this, this text thread. And I sent a note to my, I included my brother in law was like, Hey, dude, I'm buying you this, this pink toilet, they're shipping it to your house. Don't worry, you're going to get the PO for it shortly. And everybody like my entire family started talking about like, Oh, I like this color, like this color, like this color. And grand, you might not be able to have a pink toilet. But in I was telling Steve this, I'm like, the pink toilet might be 0.001%. Yeah, it's not the point of colors, you know, revenue this year, if that. But it got people talking about the brand outside of the four walls or four corners of the booth, like to the point where I'm texting people going, like, isn't that really neat? Like, look at this thing, you know, and so I saw a couple other, I saw a couple other people do like there's a tile company that had this incredibly neat, like a vanity that was 100% tile. And so I took a picture of that and I sent it to my wife and her sister who are both interior designers. And they're like, that's gorgeous. You know, and so I think trying to create these moments where people take what's at the show and go outward and want to share with other people because people enjoy those kinds of experiences is something that I'm starting to see more of, which I really like, because you're at an event, like you want to share what's at the event, you want to say like, Oh, I saw this thing, I saw that, you know, blah, blah, blah, or that that product and finding ways to get people to talk about, I think is really unique. I think, I mean, people want to say, Oh, I'll look at colors. Their booth is huge. But like, they do a really, they're very smart about how they get people talking. And to your point, Steve, excited about it too. Well, if we think about it also from the other end, Zach, we talk a lot about ROI. Steve, you and I did a podcast last year about how to get the best return on your investment from a trade show. And typically when we talk about it, you hear us talk about pre-show digital marketing strategies and doing email campaign follow ups and targeting people on social and using ads to drive foot traffic. But one piece that's really key is that what happens in your booth in and of itself is partly how you get ROI from the show. And the reason I say the other side of that is there were a significant amount of name brands that have names that are just as big as color. And I'm not going to name them because I don't want to be rude, but that basically come with their showroom and they're leaning into their brand name and their booths were busy. I mean, I'm not throwing shade. They had tons of foot traffic because they have a really big brand name and the builders that are there, they want to meet with their reps, but it's not anything a rep can't get during the rest of the year. And to me, the ROI doesn't feel like it's there because they paid for a booth, I'm saying they, there's multiple ones. I'm not talking about one in particular. You're paying for a pretty big footprint in a not inexpensive place to have a booth. You're bringing a significant amount of sales staff. You are building a booth, whether or not it's high impact and high experience, built booth design doesn't come cheap. That's a large upfront investment to not be really thoughtful and intentional about the why we're here and what we want our customers to walk away from and how we're bringing them something in this moment that is different, better, more elevated, more intentional and thoughtful than what we do through in our relationships with them throughout the rest of the year. And I think that's really where the miss came when we talk about winners and losers is you maybe didn't necessarily lose, but you certainly lost an opportunity to perhaps gain new customers, gain a new presence, elevate who you are, even grow your footprint, even if it's bigger, you know, even if it's a rather large market share, there has to be more of a reason to go to a trade show and spend quite literally millions of dollars than just this is what we do. If you've got to be there, you've got to make it worth it. Yeah, like if it's just, if it's just, oh, here's our product here, you know, here we are. Here's our product. Yeah, here's my typical sample board with the what like eight swatches and then here's another sample board with another eight swatches. I mean, that's not worth anybody's time. And I don't want to be rude. I just think that there is big opportunity for those brands that are showing up in that way to show up differently and really knock people's socks off. I think that's true. And I think I think the importance of the product shouldn't be undermined, right? Which is what you said. Yes, 100% that I can interact with the product. But I feel the losers in that sense, I feel like a lot of companies need to understand that the perception of their brand is malleable. And you can craft the perception of builders how they perceive your brand. Do they perceive you as innovative? Do they perceive you as a company that you want to work for? Or as you said, just another place where they can look at the same products that they've looked at all year. So what are you telling the industry, right? Not just the builder that's in the booth, but the industry. And because your competitors are seeing this as well, right? So how are you crafting that and shaping that? And that, to me, is an opportunity even going back to the energy in the room and hopping on that. It was one brand who I think the three of us had talked to just holding back the name. But they were positioning themselves as more aligned with this large tech company, right? And they're saying we want to be innovators in this side. We want our customers to see us as innovators in how we're revolutionizing this industry. And that came across in the booth in what you interacted with, in the way that you interacted with the product and the messaging. So brand perception is malleable. And that is a major opportunity to change how the market perceives your brand. And I think that's where a lot of companies won and that's where a lot of companies lost. I think the other thing too, and I want to get close to your takes on this, but the other thing I saw too is that brands in the past that maybe have had a very, very large booth decided to pull back a little bit. And not because they weren't doing well financially, but they're starting to see the value in going like, Hey, we know we want to be at the builder show. We know that builders are here, but we want to really double down into our audiences, which is more of these like niche events or niche trade shows. And I think that's really interesting because for so long, the builder show has been about like, who's going to wow people the most, which is important. And we just talked about the importance of experience. But there's this intentionality around, where am I putting my dollars with my trade show? I want to, I want to make a splash. I want people to know I'm here, but I'm also looking to your point about the ROI. And so I think that the biggest winners were companies that really understood, what am I trying to communicate? What am I trying to make people feel? What do they want to walk away with? And then I also got alignment across the entire organization to make sure that that message gets delivered to anybody that walks through the booth. Easier said than done. But like, like there's booths where, you know, Steve, you and I would walk through and like the message or the pitch I heard from a salesperson, it was in line with what you heard. And it was a unique, it was like a unique story. And there's other times where people were like, like, I was talking to a door handle company, the salesperson like, here's all of our new different lines and our different shades and our different finishes. And he's like, and here's all of our new experimental stuff. Half of this is going to get discontinued. And somebody is going to complain to me about it, because they did half their house in it. And now they want to do it later. I was like, I mean, he was being kind of jovial and funny, which I appreciated. But I was like, wow, man, like, tell me how you really feel. I'm not your friend. You shouldn't be divulging that. You should be giving me confidence. I didn't think it was that bad because he was trying to develop some rapport with me. But I just think it was, it was interesting, you know, he wasn't totally bought into the idea. You know, I think there's ways to go to spot it. But I'm looking at this from a micro standpoint. But I think that that's like the big winners. And when I think about losers, it's people that they position the show around, come see our products. I am here. You should want my products. I think to the, there was one booth, Zach, that you and I walked into with Deanna on our team. And I had to walk away and leave you because you were, you were still fiddling with the product. It was a shelving company. And it was so cool. Oh my gosh. Do you know he brought me back later Steve? Like we were in, I think we were in, I don't know where we were. We were in some other booth in Cabez and Zach is like, you need to come see the shelving company. It blew me away. And I'm like, okay, that's a very weird statement. I was like, and I highly doubt it. And then we got there. And I was like, okay, no, this is super frigging cool. We need to figure out what the brand name was. I have it on my phone and we'll put it in the, we'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes because it was, it was significantly surprising. Well, what, what they did was they brought it back to experience. Now granted, you can open and close their product, which a lot, a lot of products you can't, but they found an interesting way of getting that wow moment. It's because they solved problems. They had, it was like a shelving system where it's like, imagine you're standing in front of your closet and like, yeah, instead of having to reach on your tiptoes for the top shelf, they put a little handle there and you pull down the top shelf to within arms reach. I mean, it was just little things like that at every single moment, but it was like the way that the pull did what went was very smooth and you didn't feel like everything was going to topple off. And then the way that it went back up was also very smooth. It wasn't like clunky. It wasn't difficult. It wasn't too heavy. It wasn't too light. I mean, they just, they nailed it, but it was such a problem that you've like accepted that it's a problem that you like can't help but tell everybody like, what if you didn't have to reach into the back of your closet to get the pair of pants that you want from the very back, but you can just pull out the row of hangers. I mean, it was cool. I noticed the sales reps for that company. I don't know, Zach, if you had the same experience with the five times that you went in the booth, but the one time that I went in there, they, they were literally standing back with a smile and watching. So they didn't, they didn't interrupt. They were, they were letting us have that experience with the product. And I never talked to anybody in that booth. Now, if I needed to, he was right there and he was standing there and he was willing to talk. But I remember the brand name. I remember the experience that I had and I thought, that's effective because I, if I was a builder, I would want my clients to have that same experience. So they're, they're enabling the contractor to say, wow, I like this. I know that my, my, my customers are going to like it. So I thought that that was very effective because they're, they're enabling me to have that experience with the product, which was good booth design. But also they're, they're helping, they're letting me define how I want to interact with the product. And I think that's very important. Well, guys, I thought that was like, you said, Beth, like, we're gonna be the best, I guess, Kim, as I've been to, it was phenomenal. Yeah, I think it was the best. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna go on record and say, that was the best one. You can, you can fight me, try to change my mind, but it was really good. I thought it was, thought it was one of the best IBBS shows. There were several other shows in Las Vegas and that brought in a lot of people. So there was actually a lot of people going to different shows. I think it brought in a lot of traffic and builders and things like that. So I'm actually very curious to see what next year will be like and the energy that'll be there as well. Well, we are very curious to hear who your winners and losers are. All confidential emails sent to podcasts at Venvio.com will be kept between the three of us. We would love to hear what you thought of the show, what your takeaways were. I'm really curious to get your perspective on, you know, what were strategies that you thought worked. So please drop us a note. And if you enjoyed this content, check us out at Venvio.com slash podcast to subscribe and get more. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams, alongside Beth Popney Glove and Steve Coffey. Thanks, everybody.