MIPIM and MAPIC is held in the Palais Des Festivals, which is the same building the Cannes Film Festival is held in. The famous ‘bunker’, the converted basement car park is where most of the exhibition is held, however, a few years ago the Palais was given a nice shiny extension.

Exhibitions can be a fantastic way of building your business but there is no point just turning up and expecting to find new business. Attendance can be expensive so attendance should be planned an executed carefully.

16,000 people officially attend MIPIM but thousands more visit Cannes without actually buying a ticket for the exhibition in belief that most of the business is done in the bar/restaurants or on the boats that surround the Palais Des Festivals. A lot of them believe that the €1,000 ticket is not good value, however, this is missing the major benefit because as well as providing access to the exhibitions, seminars and launches at MIPIM, the tickets also provides access to the database of attendees prior to the event and this is invaluable.

If you’ve ever tried to grow you’re business you’ll appreciate how hard it is to tie the key people down in the companies and organisations that you’re targeting. However, if you working in the property and development sector all the major figures in your target companies will be at MIPIM. By buying a ticket to MIPIM you can use the database to trawl the companies attending, see who from them is attending and contact them prior to MPIM in order to set up a meeting with in Cannes. This way before you have even attended you have diary of key meetings set up.

Equally all the major national and trade media will be there so you should target your key contacts and arrange to meet them when you are there. They have to give there editors a good fill of stories in order to justify there attendance and there is tough competition for exclusives. If the media aren’t on the main attendees database then contact the press office for the event and get a list of the media who are attending.

Because of the high profile of an event like MIPIM often organisations will hold their news back and make an announcement at MIPIM. A few years ago Boris Johnson, London’s Mayor attended, which was covered by the BBC, when he launch the Olympics masterplan. All the major cities of Europe take stands and launch their development and regeneration plans there, so if you’re into development you can get head start  identifying sites and meeting key public figures.

An event like MIPIM can also help you renew your relationships with existing clients or contacts. Many companies will have an annual event at MIPIM even if they don’t have anything new to launch, although most ensure they do as it’s such a good opportunity. Irish companies will often take have a Guinness and Oyster event and one year we organised a fish and chip party on the beach.

Once you have planned you new business meetings and meeting with media, i.e. the business the next to ensure you have tickets to major parties and launch events, you need to ensure you’re seen at these. The top parties are often in the five star hotels that line Croisette, Cannes famous palm-tree-lined beach side road, such as the Martinez or the Ritz Carlton.

Lastly if you are going to take exhibition stand plan well ahead and ensure you exhibition is design and built down to the finest detail. The exhibition stand says a lot about your company, so it needs to be high quality and stylish in order to attract people. Lots of them can often look like coolest of bars. As well as presenting details of your services, you often want a novel way of attracting people there, so you have to think about what people need at and exhibition. People are often hungover so you could provide coffee and bacon sandwiches every morning, these novel ideas go down well. Providing a toilet is another pull (make sure you have a big toilet sign). Later on in the day you could have cocktail waiter from a local bar teaching people how to mix cocktails. Most of all you want a way to get people to your stand that is NOT hard sell. Getting to know someone over a drink or a much needed bacon sandwich can be infinitely more valuable than trying the traditional new business route.

Here is a great video from Ciaran Adamson on how they design and build and exhibition stand. It shows how much planning and work actually goes into making the right stand. It’s also a great example of using social media to promote your business. I’m sure Ciaran needed a way to reinforce how much time and effort it takes to build a stand and how a good concept comes together – this video captures it perfectly.

In Summary

The success of attendance in an exhibition is all in the planning; before you even get on the plane you should have a full diary of meetings with business contacts and the media, a list of launches and events you are attending, and aims of what you want to achieve at the exhibition. So buy a ticket, even it is expensive as it should more than pay for itself if you plan your time properly and execute your time properly.

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