Making Paper Cool

MeadWestvaco’s (MWV) Commercial Print business unit exhibited at HOW Design Live – a graphic artist and designer conference – to talk to attendees about their paper product, Tango. The objective? To get the young, cool, hip designers to start to spec their designs on Tango. The challenge? Paper, while a priority to designers, isn’t the most exciting or cool thing to talk about when the competition at a trade show is pretty intense and distracting. The solution? Change the conversation and the way staff interacts with the attendees.

To draw attendees into the booth to begin with, we needed to ensure we looked great, exciting, approachable and most importantly, on brand. Then, we needed to give attendees a reason to engage, something fun and different, but yet, connected to the brand.

Enter the Life Size Impression Wall. Tango’s tag line for the product was “Make a Great Impression”. To connect with that message, an 8 foot x 4 foot impression wall – reminiscent of the childhood toy for many – was constructed. Placed in the booth on the edge so it had great visibility, the “Pin Wall” as it was nicknamed, turned out to be an amazing draw for attendees. Selfies were shot, hashtags were created and people lined up for an attempt at a full body impression.

This offered the sales team ample time to engage with attendees, discussing the product and it’s benefits to their designs.

In addition, on the other side of the booth, the attendees had a chance to experience the product first-hand in a design contest. Designing a package for a false product – earbuds for Mr. Potato Head – was the project. The package was created on Tango, so the attendee was able to interact with the product to experience its performance.

The show was a huge success. Attendees certainly knew what Tango was and what MWV was talking about at this show. Leads were generated and the team was so excited about plans for the next year, they started planning and budgeting even earlier to ensure the next year was even better. And it was!