Bringing your stand to life

Once you've chosen your display system, furnish your stand with our accessories for a professional, stand-out touch.

Accessorising your exhibition stand can really make the difference when trying to engage people passing by.

What is an accessory?

Sounds obvious, doesn't it? An accessory is an extra, but not a pointless one. It should be ancillary to the exhibition stand; supporting its aims and objectives or bolstering its functionality in some way.

If we're being pragmatic, that usually means one of four things;

1. Something functional like shelving or a counter that houses or holds a product for the purposes of demonstration
2. Something practical like a literature stand for handouts or a seating area to facilitate meetings or presentations
3. Something structural that affects the flow of people around the stand
4. Something interactive like an iPad stand or media display to encourage engagement

Beyond the pragmatic lies a fifth category that may be considered a little narcissistic. It's usually an aesthetic accessory, something big or bright or otherwise attention-grabbing. It could be a light tower or an amusing game or a naked man (although that would be quite niche) or a town crier (although that would probably annoy everybody in the hall) or just a bowl of sweets (although that's a little passé). It depends entirely on the aims of your show, but the key is to attract more visitors and encourage engagement.

If you get your accessories right, you can achieve your overall objectives by luring a higher percentage of passers-by to your stand and then engaging them sufficiently to get your message across, capture their details, sign them up to a newsletter or whatever your aims were. But there's no point having an iPad stand if you don't have an engaging app or website to display on the iPad. And a literature stand would not be appropriate if your audience hates handouts. And we can't think of any situation where the naked man would be appropriate. So choose your accessories wisely.