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| A mudroom in one of the Design Idea Center's vignettes. |
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What typically happens on the last day of most trade shows
is that attendance is generally lower. This is good for us media types, as we
can then talk to people who otherwise were too busy the previous days with
customers or potential customers. Or walk through areas that were too crowded
during the early part of the show.
Walking through the NKBA Design Idea
Center is always fun. NKBA has partnered up with Meredith Corp.’s five
bath/kitchen/home consumer mags for the past few years to give K/BIS attendees
different looks for different lifestyles, as illustrated by the magazines’
readerships.
This year the vignettes were: 1) Hostess
Extraordinaire, which included a butler’s pantry and mudroom to accommodate a
family with teenagers; 2) Organizer-In-Chief, which included a lot in
interesting storage space; 3) Savvy Young Professional; which was a bathroom
with a shared bath in the middle, and his/hers bathrooms at each end; 4) Future
Thinker, which included a lot of universal design/aging-in-place features; and
5) Mother Starting Out, which a included hardwearing surfaces and flexible
living spaces for a growing family.
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| Germs United Against Bemis. |
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One of the best PR campaigns I’ve seen in a long time came
from Bemis — its Germs United Against Bemis campaign had life-sized “germs”
picketing the Bemis booth and handing out literature bemoaning the fact that
Bemis toilet seats are easier to clean and declaring war on the company was
funny. I tried to go by the booth each day to watch the germs’ antics — and get
a good laugh!
Other observations on the final day of
the show:
A Korean company, Cebien, had
a shower system complete with music. You insert a music card — download from
your MP3 player or home computer — and the music is played from the speaker at
the top of the shower panel. LED lights around the showerhead can change
colors. The company also had decorative shower panels.
Aquatic introduced its
HotSoak tub with a 1/15 horsepower pump and a built-in heater to keep the water
at the bather’s preferred water temp, eliminating the need to keep adding hot
water to the tub.
By: karot
Posted: April 23, 2008 11:45 AM
It definitely had people talking.
"Viral" campaigning at its best!