Murphy's Law of Exhibiting is Castaway

It's every exhibitor's nightmare: you show up at an event to market your firm, and your booth is missing.

That's what happened to the folks from SubscriberMail at last week's Mplanet conference, but company CEO Jordan Ayan and his staff made the best of the situation with grace and good humor.

Wandering the "Discovery Center" (i.e., Mplanet's name for the exhibit hall), I was curious about SubscriberMail's display -- stacks and stacks of FedEx boxes, complete with a "Wilson"-type ball under a sign announcing an unusual contest: Guess when FedEx will deliver our booth and win a box of Omaha Steaks (delivered by UPS!)

Turns out SubscriberMail shipped their display the prior week and FedEx tracked it to somewhere in Florida, but not at the conference site where it was supposed to be.

Fortunately, a FedEx marketing exec who was attending the conference got involved to recover the situation, including delivering a personal apology from FedEx's CEO. (I wasn't privy to any other official recovery that they offered SubscriberMail.)

And then what happened?

The booth eventually arrived near the end of the conference. And without rancor (despite their frustration), Jordan told me that in all his years of dealing with FedEx, this was only the second time they had a problem with them.

But I was impressed with SubscriberMail's handling of the situation, as was many of the attendees & fellow exhibitors. Ironically, they generated a lot of traffic with people checking back throughout the conference to see if their booth was delivered.

And I'm sure the UPS attendee at the conference also got a kick out of the situation!

Comments

[Toby]

Brilliant. Creative. Innovative. Thanks for the post.