As a marketing agency that works in the building space, we have attended a number of Greenbuild tradeshows – but none that have had the hype and vigor of this year’s set in The Big Easy.

While selecting New Orleans as the venue at the end of hurricane season might have been a little nerve wracking for HanleyWood, it has proven to be a fun show experience. The show kicked off with a jazz band greeting attendees at the convention center steps. Traditional New Orleans cuisine was served at lunch. Happy hour broke out around 4 p.m. after the last session to encourage last minute booth traffic at the end of the day.

While expo hall traffic seemed slow while classes were in session, we capitalized on the time with our clients by scheduling back-to-back media appointments. Greenbuild is a great opportunity for meeting with key trade media. The face-time and relationship building with media contacts is priceless.

We also conducted surveys with booth attendees to learn more about who is walking through the booth, their interests, their experience at the booth and more – all to help qualify leads and the type of attendees that are at the show. Anyone who took the survey would enter to win our booth giveaway – it always helps if there is an incentive!

Then, we hit the town and spotted Sloan firing up Bourbon Street with beads and signs! In our experience, Sloan is always showing its Greenbuild attendees a good time – they made our Greenbuild recap last year, too.

All in all, a successful day 1. On to day 2!