Why go to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and how to do it right

Hello! My name is Katya Frank, I am a leading marketer Mobile Dimension. In this article I will give a small analysis of the Mobile World Congress exhibition in Barcelona, ​​compare it a bit with the GSMA exhibition in Shanghai, tell you who should participate in it, and how to organize everything so as not to screw it up. I will also tell you what could have been better prepared, what we missed, and what I recommend to everyone who goes there next year. The article will be useful to marketers and business developers of IT companies.

I will not show new items from Samsung and Nokia (but I will show a helicopter) and do reviews on stands or conduct an excursion, information about this part of the exhibition is full in runet, so I want to light up a little side that is not visible to the media. I will also tell you a little bit how to take part in the MWC and not go broke while doing so, but this is not an advertisement, but part of the life experience that we have lived through.

Prehistory

Mobile Dimension is a mobile application developer working in foreign markets, and, in general, we found it logical to participate in the MWC Shanghai last year, and in the MWC Barcelona this year.
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Last year we went to Shanghai as participants in the Russian pavilion organized by the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation. We went to Barcelona with the Russian Export Center and this time we had our own stand at the pavilion.

Next, I will tell you more about preparing for the trip, about co-financing of the REC and what it is, how to go through the procedure and what you will get as a result

Who cares about the exhibition right away, I recommend squandering further, as there’s about a page of organizational details that will only be useful for marketers.

To begin with, I will say that, as many know, participation in such major exhibitions as MWC, in Computex Taipei and others, is just like that from the street, in my humble opinion, like a wing from a Boeing. For many, these are very heavy marketing budgets for a brand-building project. Such exhibitions cost from 7 thousand euros for Raw Space 6 meters without buildings (we throw about as many more on the simplest buildings) to plus infinity depending on how little time is left before the event and what your appetites are. Building a city on the floor of a pavilion in the style of Gazprom is priceless. You can spend three days at the exhibition, shikanut and immediately close the company and go to the Cayman Islands to hide from the collectors that will come to your soul. A bit better situation if you already participated. You can operate that you are a participant of the second year, demand a discount, try to negotiate. It is a bit easier to bargain in China, since all materials for building are produced from them and there everything is basically cheaper.

I'll tell you how it can be done significantly cheaper

The Russian Export Center is an organization that is engaged in all kinds of support for Russian exports (including non-raw materials) abroad. The support program also includes co-financing (partial funding), i.e. indirect material support for SMEs. I translate into Russian - if you are a small and medium business, you can get co-financing for your participation in a major international event, both as part of a Russian delegation, and separately. Under indirect support, it should be understood that no one pays you money directly, but takes on a fairly large percentage of your costs. The total amount is different each time depending on the specific event, but from myself I can say that it very significantly saves you the marketing budget + gives you a lot of interesting opportunities, such as an extra badge or other benefits from being on a national stand.

For reference: At major exhibitions such as CES, CEBIT or MWC, there are almost always national peacock exhibitions. They represent themselves young companies, united in a national pavilion.

What is the advantage of participating in the national pavilion?

A very simple. If you are an abstract startup HighTech Mobile Innovation Inc, then the maximum that you can count on MWC is a stand of 6 squares for big money with a simple building. And, what is the most annoying, such giants as Nokia, Samsung, ZTE, Huawei and others, redeem the area for the years before the exhibition and take precedence over all others in choosing a favorable place. As a result, small stands are often stuffed into the far corner so as not to spoil the plan and development engineering. This year places were sold even in the corridors between the pavilions. It is expensive, meaning - mercilessly little. There is gigantic traffic in the corridors, and on the one hand it is good, but on the other hand, in order to use it, you have to make a huge amount of effort to get their attention.


In general, what is called, taste and color ... But from simple logic, participation on the stand of the national delegation of 100 squares is more profitable than on the stand of 6 squares in the corridor. A large stand is more noticeable, higher, attracts more attention.


A very sad stand of a very curious startup in an escalatorial span.

What else does participation on the national stand give?

Of course, you will be printed in the pavilion catalog, as well as various business programs and business events, meetings with business missions from other pavilions and other cult mass events. Otherwise, the main meaning is everywhere - participation.

What is required and what awaits you?

First of all, to be morally prepared for collecting, filling out and sending a large number of documents, incl. in the originals. With this sign, everyone who has ever prepared a tender, the list of documents is approximately the same. You will need an extract from the SME and from the Unified State Register. If you have a special person in the team who can be entrusted with this - consider yourself lucky. And remember that even if at first no one warns about this, then at the end you will surely request originals by mail, be prepared for this and keep each piece of paper as the first spring flower. To begin with, you can make an application for registration in the system (ie, become an exporter) and, having passed this stage, assess whether you are ready to continue collecting papers. In the comments I will be ready to share links if someone needs advice on the process. Get ready for the fact that the whole procedure takes a lot of time. Submit documents in advance and follow the publication of the protocols on the site - whether you approved to participate in co-financing for the event or not. Do not hesitate to call u to refine statuses.

Now a little more introductory information about the exhibition itself

When we flew to Barcelona, ​​we were shocked by the level of organization. Badges were issued on all days in all terminals of the airport, it was possible to get in the city, in two, it seems the points of issue, as well as in the exhibition complex itself (the latter is not recommended by the organizers themselves - there are a lot of people). When making a badge on the site, you can put a tick where exactly you want to get your badge and how many.

At the airport, a whole floor was set aside for issuing badges, the navigation “For MWC members - there” is extremely understandable, every 15 meters there is a volunteer in a uniform red vest who will show you the way and tell you.


What caused us total enthusiasm, so this ticket for the subway. All participants are given a travel ticket on the subway, which is valid for all four days of the exhibition in the whole city. Firstly, the metro in Bars is very expensive, and secondly, the exhibition complex Fira Barcelona is located on a separate commercial metro line, the cost of which you have to pay separately from the main system, so I can very well imagine what a hellish crowd would be at the payment terminals, if the organizers did not issue tickets in advance.

In the city itself there are also banners everywhere, navigation everywhere, advertising everywhere, WMC info points everywhere.

Remark. When planning a visit to the MWC, attend to housing much in advance. We bought everything in December, but already then the hotel turned out about half a million rubles for four, so we rented an inexpensive apartment on Airbnb. But in this case, specify whether there is heating in the apartment, it snowed on our trip to Barcelona.

About the exhibition

When we went to Shanghai last year, we realized how much the Asian world is different from the European one even at such global events. If at the MWC in Shanghai, almost all manufacturers were Chinese, they sold and offered services and products for the domestic market and didn’t even try to translate their materials, headings and stands into English, but Barcelona is exactly the opposite. In Fira Barcelona, ​​and these are 9 (nine!) Huge halls + corridors and courtyards of a huge walking carnival oriented towards Europe here and now.


In this regard, it is imperative to do to the MWC in Barcelona - this is to prepare good, attractive and understandable materials in English, and even better - to be confused and translate them into Spanish. We translated only into English, but we did not translate into Spanish, and to some extent we regretted it.


A source

Pavilion 8.1 was fully dedicated to mobile applications and development, promotion and mobile advertising. We ended up in hall 6, where there was no one, but since it was the pavilion of the REC, we could not influence the choice of the hall. The problem is that the exhibition does not officially crush the exhibitors into the halls, the exhibition divides only on the engineering of stands, laying them on a plan like in Tetris. Therefore, if it is convenient for the exhibition to move you, to shove a stand with an area from a football field, the exhibition will do it. As a result - 9 halls of infinite flow of information, which is impossible to somehow structure. To get around all nine and not go crazy, you have to use the exit method of the maze - go all the time on the right side.

If you are a mobile developer and are planning to participate next year - write to the organizers and ask where they plan to host the developers room. Why did this turn out to be important? Because many who come to the MWC, come immediately with specific tasks, to specific companies and with pre-arranged meetings and do not go through random halls to click the beak. The result is that if you are a developer, but you are not in the hall you need (in our case, not at 8.1), your audience may simply not know about your stand. Our booth was located in Pavilion 6 and it turned out that this was not entirely successful. In Shanghai, there was no such problem, as there were almost no mobile developers there, and the exhibition itself was less.

Who knows, perhaps the organizers will start splitting the rooms into Apps, Health & Wearable, IoT and other categories to make it easier for visitors to navigate. But so far such a clear boundary was only in hall 8.1. - mobile applications.


Nokia stand on MWC18
A source

First of all, planning your booth, think about the chip. Stands so many and of such size that it is really very difficult to outdo a neighbor. Nokia this year, without undue modesty, simply built the city on half the pavilion. Think about the details, find out from the building, what is the height of the walls at the stand adjacent to you, try not to be lower. Forget about balloons - they are in the past. Squeak of the season - rotating structures, suspended on rails to the ceiling, moving elements with illumination, all as high as possible, as bright as possible, as loud as possible.


Think over the system of contests on the stand, do not load anyone with a business program, hire promo girls, put a mustang on the stand and pour beer, give a smart watch and invest in your stand promo. AppsFlyer poured whiskey on the stand, decorated under the saloon from the wild west, and played music, which will be remembered for a very long time. Create a boom around the booth, intrigue, escalate interest, promise everyone a surprise and a closed party. We did not have such a piece, since we were extremely limited by the concept of the national pavilion. We are very sorry, we will come up with something to surprise next year.


In general, networking is a huge part of the meaning of being there. Make appointments through the exhibition portal and through the mobile application, do not ignore this opportunity, it’s really very convenient. We constantly met with someone, went to 4YFN events and held a lot of meetings at the stand. Now we understand that we could have even more.



Organize business meetings with target customers. At MWC, there are people who privately organize (for money, of course) visits to your booth at various companies that you are interested in. You can and should also negotiate with such people, these are targeted contacts. Most likely, they will write to you themselves as soon as your company is published on the MWC website. Unfortunately, we did not take advantage of this opportunity, considered that networking was enough and we would limit ourselves to business meetings organized by the stand. A little regret.


Negotiate with the giants for six months. Many large companies in general have booths completely closed to public at MWC, exclusively with meeting rooms. To get to such stands without an appointment is impossible, the record is closed completely sometimes as much as two months. Such companies included Ernst & Young, Google (Android), Boston consulting, Nokia. We did not know about it and could not get to the Android stand.


Get acquainted with the crowd of competitors and startups. At the MWC, evening events and parties are constantly organized and this is a great chance to meet and exchange experiences. We went to such events every evening and took out a lot of new and useful contacts, literally, from dating in the queue at the bar!


Try co-branding! Negotiate with partner companies, with large corporations with friendly marketing, share in half the cost of a stand and get the benefits of a profitable neighborhood. In the same way, you can simply use the neighborhood with the Google booth, but without prior agreement it will be difficult to do technically.

What else was interesting at the exhibition?

A helicopter from Huawei.


Global Mobile Awards
If you are traveling to the MWC, you can apply for your solution to participate in the Global Mobile Awards. Be careful, accepting applications closes in early January, you need to fill in a rather impressive form, then the jury is selected. There are many categories, it is easy enough to choose for yourself At first glance it seems that it is impossible to compete with giants like Huawei and Zte, but we managed to enter the top five nominees in our category with the mobile app “ Pregnancy Calendar ”, and this is an Oscar nomination of the mobile world! The award ceremony looks very cool and the truth is very similar to Oscar - the carpet and the brilliant TV presenters. And, of course, when your logo is shown from the stage, GLOMO is a very exciting moment.



There were really a lot of stands. To list them all is pointless, and this is not a review of the exhibition, but a practical guide to participation.

So, we got to the conclusions.

It makes sense to participate if you:

• Mobile developer or sell service for developers
• Make anything wearable - gadgets, medical devices, fitness trackers, headphones
• Make software with versions for mobile devices
• You have implemented mobile technology in your company and want to tell the whole world about it - the Mercedes Benz stand presented the Smart concept car and the new A-classe stuffed with electronics and mobility
• In general, anything related to mobility, even if you produce batteries

Participating for sure does NOT make sense only in one case : if you produce something that is not translated (not localized) at least in English. Going to the exhibition is advisable only with a fully translated and finished product.

Should I participate without a stand, walk and hand out flyers, get acquainted?
Yes, but it is not accurate. The entry ticket of the simplest level costs one thousand euros + travel expenses. He gives only passages to the exhibition. To get to the additional lectures, you need to get a silver pass, it is immediately much more expensive. If there is no opportunity to put up a stand, then surely it is better to go just as a visitor than by any means. But at the same time, you need to understand that there will be a million people like you, mixed with a million promotional personnel with leaflets.

It will be difficult, but fun.