Designing a standout booth is difficult. Enlisting the help of professional exhibit designers will help significantly, but your company should come to the table ready to tell your brand’s story so the designers can run with the idea.
Here are four ways to use an exhibit to define and promote your brand:
1. Support your brand’s ideal purpose
When conceptualizing a trade show booth or similar exhibition, your design should help drive your brand’s ideal purpose. In essence, your brand’s overarching goal – besides being profitable – should be to enact some positive change in the world.
Speaking with LucidPress, startup founder Arielle Jackson explained that a brand’s ideal purpose is the intersection of your brand’s best image plus some external tension. For example, the ideal purpose of an organic fruit seller may be to help people become healthier, or perhaps it’s to make natural food more affordable.
When show attendees view your exhibit, they should be able to infer this purpose from its branded design.

2. Use your brand’s colors
People tend to recognize brands by their signature colors. If you see a red can of soda, chances are you’re already thinking of Coca Cola. See an orange bucket? It’s probably Home Depot.
Your brand colors should feature significantly in your exhibit’s design. Even if you’re renting a booth, the design team can customize it with graphics and modular structures to make your brand’s colors stand out on the crowded show floor.
As Creative Bloq noted, color can be a powerful marketing tool. Warm colors can promote action while cool colors are associated with tranquility and ease. Don’t neglect this powerful tool of the branding arsenal.
3. Disrupt the traditional exhibit
Who says that all trade show booths need to look alike? Imagine your space on the tradeshow floor as a blank canvas with three dimensions. Some exhibits may look like square boxes – but there’s no rule saying your booth needs to be conformist.
Disrupt the traditional booth by creating a concept that only your brand can truly own. For example, ProExhibits designed a beautiful exhibit for Stikwood that looks like a transplanted cabin in the woods. When attendees see an interesting and novel concept, they’ll stop to see what it’s all about.
4. Connect with other marketing efforts
Think of your branded exhibit as an extension of your holistic marketing campaign. Lori Fisher of MediaContact USA explained that a holistic marketing campaign incorporates social marketing, relationship building and integrated marketing.
Depending on your brand’s goals, you may be able drive booth visitors to your website or Facebook page – or you could collect emails for an email marketing campaign. The important thing to remember is that your exhibit doesn’t exist in a bubble – it should fit snugly into your overall marketing strategy.