What I Learned From Talking Dogs
In cartoons and movies, dogs can talk. All the time. They must think we’re not listening. Or maybe they’re smart enough to know that we puny humans don’t understand dog-talk.
Whatever.
I don’t mind talking dogs. In fact, I like them just fine. My 10-year old son watches Scooby-Doo and movies like ‘Cats and Dogs’ and ‘Homeward Bound’ that feature talking dogs.
As far as he knows that’s the way it should be. Dogs and cats talking, and if they’re on screen we can hear and understand them.
It’s as if someone magically transformed those run-of-the-mill pets into super-beings that now are able to converse in languages not common to their species.
I wonder if we humans can do that….
Let’s say that we’re able to…uh…read minds, for instance. What would your booth visitors be saying if you could read the thought balloons above their heads?
“My, that booth needs cleaning.”
“Jeez, that guy’s on the cell phone again!”
“Hmmph, he should have at least used a breath mint to cover up that onion breath!”
Or what if all cell phone conversations within ten feet were beamed right to your head?
“Yeah, uh…let’s meet at the street…no, never mind, let’s do it after lunch. No, wait. Can you meet me here?”
“What’s your problem? I mean, what’s your freakin’ problem, man?”
“Yeah, I know, I know, but I really DO have to go out to dinner with her…it’s business…the boss told me I had to…”
I’m sure you’d hear a lot of idiotic and innocuous chatter. Maybe every 100th phone call you were eavesdropping on contained a nugget of information about your competitor or industry that made you rich.
Hey, since we’ve already established that dogs can talk, it’s not much of a leap to tell ourselves that we can hear private cell phone calls, right? Or read minds?
By imagining talking dogs, you can imagine a lot of wild and crazy things. Like making your booth from orange peels (what a smell!). Or creating a booth back wall of tires. Or teaching your visitors to juggle. Or sending visitors home with a Polaroid photo of themselves. I dunno – creativity comes in many forms. Are you being creative in your booth?
Are you being creative – I mean, really creative – in the important areas of tradeshow marketing?
- lead gathering
- lead follow up
- booth design
- visitor interaction
- staff training
- schmoozing with clients
- putting on a demo
- enticing visitors to your booth
If you can be more creative and interesting than a majority of your fellow exhibitors you’ll find yourself with more traffic.
The whole talking dog approach to this blog post was to draw you in and make you say ‘what the hell?’
Did it work? Did you wonder what the hell I was writing about?
If you’ve made it this far you should check out my new favorite book on creativity, ThinkerToys by Michael Michalko. I just finished it today and am already planning a number of ways to use it for future endeavors: sales, writing, brainstorming, planning, creating…so many ideas have come out of just READING the book that I can’t wait until I actually start to implement and use his ideas.
Check it out here (affiliate link): Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition)
Also check out a funny talking dog joke.
photo credit: raggio(ALL4HIM)productions
