There was a time when nobody left a trade show empty-handed.
Brochures. Catalogs. Sell sheets. Business cards. Product sheets. Folders containing all of the above. By the end of the day, you were carrying around several pounds of information you were absolutely going to read later.
Sure you were.
Eventually, we all seemed to come to the same conclusion. People don't want all this stuff. And we probably weren't wrong.
Nobody wants to fly home with a suitcase full of brochures. Companies don't want to print 500 product sheets only to change a specification two weeks later. And I'm fairly certain nobody has ever returned to the office, dramatically pulled a stack of literature from their bag and announced, "Cancel my afternoon. I have some reading to do."
So, we embraced technology.
We put everything on our websites. We emailed information after conversations. We connected on LinkedIn. And then QR codes arrived and seemed to solve the whole thing.
Want more information? Scan here.
Want to see our products? Scan here.
Want to download the specifications, watch the video, meet the team, enter the drawing, schedule a meeting, order lunch and possibly refinance your house?
There's probably a QR code for that.
For a while, it seemed like the perfect answer. One tiny square could replace an entire table full of literature. Except now we're being warned not to scan unfamiliar QR codes because scammers can use them to send us to fake websites or worse.
Well, that's inconvenient.
I'm not suggesting QR codes are going anywhere. They're useful. But it does add another wrinkle to something I've been wondering about lately.
Did we get so good at eliminating the stuff people didn't want that we forgot to give them something they might?
Because something else has been happening while we've been busy moving everything online. People are buying records again. They're buying print magazines, paper planners, physical books, film cameras and, somehow, even CDs. Apparently, after spending years putting our entire lives onto screens, some of us have decided we'd also like to own things we can touch. Everything really does come back in style.
That doesn't mean we should start firing up the brochure printer. I am not advocating for the return of the three-ring binder. But it does make me wonder if physical was ever really the problem. Maybe the problem was that so much of what we handed people simply wasn't worth keeping.
Then I came across some research that made the question even more interesting.
CEIR recently talked with Gen Z and younger Millennial professionals about what they want from in-person business events. This is a generation that has grown up with practically unlimited information available through a screen, yet more information wasn't necessarily what they were looking for. They wanted conversations, connections and the chance to see and experience things for themselves.
That changes the equation a little.
If someone wants your product specifications, they can probably find them before they've finished their morning coffee. They can watch the video, read the case study, compare products and learn about your company without ever talking to you.
So maybe the job of the leave-behind has changed. It doesn't have to tell someone everything about your company anymore. That's what your website is for. It just needs to help them remember what you talked about and make it easy to find you again.
That could be a product sample connected to what you talked about, a small reference piece they'll actually use or one thoughtfully chosen piece of print. Even the business card has evolved. Electronic versions let someone tap a phone and save your contact information without adding another card to their wallet. Apparently even the business card figured out how to become digital without completely disappearing.
And it doesn't necessarily have to be physical. A personal follow-up with the information someone specifically asked for is very different from automatically dropping them into a six-email nurture sequence before they've made it back to their hotel.
That's the distinction I've been missing. That's the distinction I've been missing. For years, we assumed digital was the obvious winner because it couldn't end up in the trash.
Technically true.
It can, however, end up in an inbox with 147 unread emails, buried in browser history, forgotten in a downloads folder, or attached to a LinkedIn connection you no longer remember making. Turns out there are quite a few ways to throw something away without ever touching a trash can.
I'm not suggesting we go backward. But I do think the pendulum swung a little too far. Some things deserve to stay in the past. But I do think the pendulum swung a little too far.
What we give someone now doesn't need to be more. It just needs to be thoughtful enough that they actually want to keep it.
And somehow, coming full circle feels like progress.
