When an AV show takes place for the first time in a part of the country that has never experienced one, the hopes of one and all are high. Hyderabad is considered as the ideal city to have such a show what with the target audience being extremely fond of their music & movies. The majority of these enthusiasts also have the where with all to spend and also have the luxury of real estate to do justice to their spending, which is quite rare these days in general. Hence the show should ideally be a huge hit.
From what we saw from Thursday afternoon to the late evening on Sunday, it was by all accounts a relative success but there is always room for improvement and that is where we shall focus on in this piece.
Starting from the venue, which is well known in the local circuit to be one that is pretty much a nonentity these days as far as being one visited by the local well heeled populace, it became pretty apparent from Thursday itself as for why this was the case.
Secondly, we have pretty much given up on trying to promote the show as time & again, our pleas to get the information on who is exhibiting which brands & their specific models, goes on deaf ears & now it has become a truly futile attempt to get the desired information from either the show organisers or the exhibitors, who by their behaviour with regard to sharing the relevant information, appear to be still in kindergarten & believe in keeping everything a secret! How does it help to grow the audience of such a show if you do not believe in divulging any information to the target audience, therby making it not a priority for them to attend & look at other things to do during the weekend of the show? We are constantly provided with such feedback from disgruntled AV enthusiasts, who now don’t even bother to think about visiting the show. It is sad to see the enthusiasm being killed by such childish mentality of the exhibitors and being disrespectful towards the target audience as well. Ok, so then the show is targeted towards the industry itself as it becomes more of a B2B, than a B2C show. If that is the case, then it should purely focus on this aspect & put an end towards AV enthusiasts, prospective buyers, end users as being the targeted audience for the same. There is no point for the show organisers to spend tidy sums by means of advertising in local newspapers, digital media & other such avenues, which am sure they wouldn’t mind as their profits will no doubt be much more if they went down this path.
Another recurring issue is that of static displays, which inspite of doing no favours to the visiting audience yet the trend continues, which is disappointing to say the very least.
Overall, the show could have been much better, more involving & get much more traction, had the organisers & exhibitors being more enthusiastic towards achieving the common goal.
We hope that our observations are taken into consideration positively and they help in improving the quality of the shows in the future to ensure growth for the AV Industry & Target Audience.
