Inevitably there was good and bad at the Geneva Motor Show. Bad was the profusion of aggressive-looking cars - you know the type? The shape of car is all squat and muscle - something akin to an automotive Pit Bull Terrier. It's a sad day for western males when even an MG saloon appears obliged to prop up the failing ego . . . whatever happened to those sleek, rounded, curvaceous sports cars of the 60s?
The good news was presentation. Pal Expo Geneva is vast, with acres of floor space, typical of a truly international exhibition centre. But for the car show certain rules are in evidence, primarily one that limits stand design and floor usage. Stands, or at least their vertical scenic elements, are strictly limited to the perimeter of the building; the floor is open from wall to wall.
Where most modern exhibitions appear to mimic the Shopping Mall ruse of sucking you in and then making the floor plan and exits so obscure that you can't find your way out, the Geneva Motor Show is a navigator's delight. While that might be bad news for the staging companies, it doesn't appear to have limited the extravagances of sound, light and video; even so, it's ultimately the visitors who benefit, because with all the cars simply presented shoulder to shoulder on the main floor, you can at least argue there's a level playing field from the viewer's point of view.
This still leaves the show designers and production houses with the task of attracting visitors to their particular client's show 'area'. Look up and you can see miles of truss supporting thousands of lights, all static (I wondered if the rule-makers also banned moving lights?), so not much opportunity for differentiation there. And obviously there are noise limits - a motor show should not mimic the 'Substantial Sound' area of a PLASA Show, for example.
Which leaves the visual medium, and this was the dominant factor - as the television company managers are so fond of telling the advertisers, most people receive more than 90% of all 'learned' information from visual sources, namely TV. There's dominance in other ways too. "Over 90% of the screens here are made by us," informed Stephan Paridaen, president of Barco's Media and Entertainment division. This was no idle boast on his part - I saw the list of stands/screens and it's daunting, but there were one or two other players, not least Hibino, whose LED screens loomed large above the BMW stand, of which Paridaen had the good grace to admit, "these are very good. The high definition content is also excellent."
Was it not Sun Tzu who said 500 years BC, "know your enemy?" Paridaen may be generous in his praise of the Hibino product, and quite right too - it was visibly a quality product - but don't mistake his focus.
Without wishing to bore you with statistics, 25 auto manufacturers across the six main expo halls had Barco screens. From the perspective of the service providers you initially wonder where the differentiation comes from? Gahrens & Batterman and ICT - two of the leading German suppliers, and Creative Technology Germany, supplied Barco ILite and MiPix products; so too XL Video and CT UK and also ETF from the Procon group, while France-based VPS supplied a mix of Barco DLite 7 and Solaris LC40.
It's arguably the product mix that has put Barco in such a position. "We are aiming to be world leader in visual presentation niche markets", said Paridaen at a press presentation earlier that day. Notice the phrasing - 'visual presentation'. He's talking about more than selling screens, "in visual solutions, not products." Which gives some clue to their recent acquisition of Folsom in the US. (Interestingly I spoke to a presentation business colleague of mine in the US about this, he was amazed to learn Barc
