Expand International

Expand is now on Manta!

Tents, graphics and flags at the Indy Car race series

Each year, Indy Car has a racing series throughout the US and Canada. As part of the fan experience, they have created a huge experiential area called "Fan Village". This area is where the fans get to interact with the drivers, brands and sponsors of the Indy Car Series. Some of them include IZOD, The National Guard, Honda and Verizon. To appeal to children and the ‘kids at heart’, there are many driving simulators and racing games that further promote racing. 

 
 
In order to brand the logos in Fan Village, IZOD used a variety of tents, truss systems and barricades with graphic that cover or decorate the functional metal stanchions. To provide additional height and break up the monotony of tent after tent, they decided to use a flag stand that reached almost 20' tall and they used them all around Fan Village. These extra tall flag stands, allowed IZOD to get their name high above the crowd and further brand this experiential marketing event.

 

To see more images from Fan Village at various Indy Car races, please view the photo albums here: http://www.facebook.com/ExpandUS

The NEW 2011 Expand Collection Brochure

We are proud to announce our new product catalog for 2011. This catalog has our newest banner stands and event displays for all of your marketing needs. If you are looking for a portable banner stand for your next presentation, experiential marketing event, product launch or trade show, be sure to view this display catalog!

Simply click on the brochure below to open a larger version. Then, simply flip through the catalog by clicking on each page!

See Expand's full line of portable event displays by going to our website www.expandmedia.com.  Feel free to contact us with any questions 800.758.3020

Expand Launches its newest banner stand - Expand MediaScreen 3

Introducing our newest pearl, the Expand MediaScreen 3

 

 

In 2000, we introduced the Expand QuickScreen 3.

It soon became the most recognized retractable banner on the market with its unique design and its color combinations.

Even after a decade, it is still very popular. In 2010 it won a Wide-Format Magazine Reader's Choice award for Best Banner Stand.

Based on the experience we have gained since then, we have now created the next generation retractable banner - the Expand MediaScreen 3.

Here is what we did. 

 

 

1. Made graphic change-out even faster 

Graphic change-out with two clicks - no tools needed.

Simply click to open the snap locks and the graphic cassette is released - then insert your new cassette and close the snap locks.

With its long lifetime, you will use your Expand MediaScreen 3 many years. You can now simply replace the banner when you need to update the message. It is more cost-effective in the long run and better for the environment! 

 

 

 
  

2. Improved the vertical graphic functionality

For a perfectly vertical graphic, simply turn the knob. It has never been easier. An uneven floor is a problem of the past.   

 

 

 

3. Simplified the removal of the end caps

The snap-on end caps are easily replaced without any tools, just grab the cap and snap it off - this makes color change easy.  

 

 

 

4. Introduced a new range of colors

We have chosen sophisticated, modern colors for the end caps: Ruby Black, Midnight Blue, Polar White, Chrome, Grey Rubber (rubber material).

 

 

 

 

  

5. Added an alternative aluminum finish

Matte or polished aluminum for the base.Mix & Match. The two bases together with the new colors offer a range of different looks.

 

 

 

 

 

6. Made the design slimmer and increased stability

We made the design slimmer and at the same time achieved increased stability. 

 

 

 

7. Designed a hard case for maximum protection

It is highly shock resistant for maximum protection during transport & storage. No extra bag is needed for the spotlight - everything fits into the case. The case is 99.9% recyclable.

 

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We will be debuting the Expand MediaScreen 3 (NOW) at the Exhibitor2011 show in Las Vegas, Nevada March 28-30 2011. Stop by their booth #1645 to receive a live demonstration and find your pearl!

Send us a request »            

Go to the Expand MediaScreen 3 product page

 

Bring your message to your target audience

IKEA ran a campaign in the Paris subway where they placed furniture at the station. We have always promoted the idea of taking your message - or product for that matter - to your target audience, but they really took it to the next step. It created a lot of debate, but it created a lot of debate about IKEA and that is always a plus.

As the pictures show, they also used back drop graphics for extra impact.

A real Expand moment!
Bjorn

 

Have a Nice Day - Part 2

By Julian Rowlandson, sales director, Expand International (GB)

     The advent of social networking has brought another major reason, both positive and negative. For example, HSBC found out the hard way when they decided to charge students for over drafting their account.  Within a matter of a day the Facebook page created challenging the decision, had thousands of very vocal members.  Very quickly HSBC was forced to reverse their decision.  The world of the tweeting, blogging and status update has brought customer power back into focus.

     What are the benefits of good customer service?  Clearly there is a financial one, stress levels tend to be lower, staff retention tends to be higher and working with customers can be a lot of fun.

     Jan Carlzon learned the lessons of customer service and satisfaction as CEO of SAS airlines.  When he joined the company in 1981 it was losing $17 million a year and was bottom of the league tables for customer service and punctuality.  Within a year he had turned the company around, it was heading the league tables and had made a $54 million profit.  He did it by focusing on the customer.  Well known for developing the thinking known as “moments of truth”, Carlzon saw this every time an employee of the company came into contact with a customer.  He estimated that within his organization there were 50,000 "moments of truth" each day, opportunities to shine or stumble.  He also saw the importance of giving staff the authority to act to resolve difficulties.  He said “Problems are solved on the spot, as soon as they arise. No front-line employee has to wait for a supervisor's permission”.  Research shows how right he was in that 95% of people who complain will do business with you again if you are able to solve their issue on the spot and on average they will tell 5 other people about how well your organization handled the problem.

     It is not just about how you manage problems, it is about how you cater to your customer that contributes to the total perception of your organization.  At Expand we work very hard to try and deliver the very best customer service in our industry.  We try hard to understand the needs of the customer, and often more importantly, the needs of their customer.  We have been known to put people on trains to make sure that goods get where they need to be when they need to be there.  In six years I can only think of three occasions when we failed to meet the needs of our customers.  We do not have problems we have challenges, we look for solutions not barriers and remarkably we normally find them.

     My favorite story relates to a client who called us up one morning at 9.30 am asking if we could help supply some of our 3 meter (10 foot) high Expand MediaScreen XL stands.  Their courier company had lost their existing units and they had an event that night.  I reassured her that we had the units in stock and as long as I could find a printer to turn the graphics around in time it would be fine.  I made a few calls, found a printer to do the graphics and called the customer back.  It was about this time that things took on a more challenging aspect.  “Where do we need to deliver the stands to”, I asked.  “5th Avenue New York.  The event starts at 7.30” was her reply.  I took a deep breath and said I would call her back.  Time differences worked in our favor and a couple of phone calls later I was able to confirm that we could deliver.  The stands got to the venue at 6.50pm that evening.  We never know what can be done until we try.  Winston Churchill said: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

     So what does all this mean for our businesses?  Clearly we must focus on our customers.  Here are some of my thoughts of simple things we can all do.

1.  We need to give our customers personalized attention.  We all like to be treated as individuals.  A simple customer relationship management program can help hugely in this area.  Talk to our customers find out what is important to them.  What frustrates them?  What could we do differently to make the relationship with us easier?  Don’t forget, it is not always about price.  If customers see that the way you deal with them saves them time, effort and stress that can be as good as a discount.

2. We need to make sure that our teams display positive behavior towards all our customers.  We need to show them respect, consideration and appreciation.  At the end of the day, it is our customers that are paying our salaries and generating our profits.

3. We need to make sure that we understand them, how they feel, the facts of the situation and what is going to provide them with the best solution.

4. We need to be as helpful to them as we can.  If we need to give them bad news, let’s already have thought through possible implications and solutions.  I was with a customer yesterday who was telling me of a telephone conversation he had just had.  He had been called to say that an email he wanted had been sent.  The caller went on to say that while he had sent it, he thought it was wrong. Of course this was not very helpful to my customer.  Why did he not make sure it was right before he sent it?

So two key strategies that we can use; We can manage the relationship and we can manage the transaction.

    In order to manage the relationship the first thing we need to do is take the initiative.  We need to be proactive not reactive.

• At Expand one of the first questions we ask is “What are you trying to achieve?”  If we are able to understand what our customer wants to do, we are in a far better place to deliver a solution.   We have been able to provide some stunning solutions which are very different to the customer's initial “What I want is...”
• Secondly, we need to be positive.  Once you have taken the initiative and have taken the decision to act positively, then you put the psychological pressure on your customer to react in a positive fashion.  Remember when customers are being difficult, the odds are, you’re not the target you just happen to be in range. 
• Finally, we can make the customer feel special and make them feel important.

    Managing the transaction involves listening and understanding.  We need to focus on the customer, we need to think like a customer and understand their need. Good questioning skills are essential here.

    We need to be helpful.  We have all experienced the situation where, as a customer, every barrier appears to be thrown in our way to doing business.  As Carlzon found, there is no better way to exceed customer expectations than to give staff the authority and responsibility to solve problems immediately without needing to refer to a higher authority.

    Finally we need to recognize the uniqueness of each situation.  Every customer interaction has the potential to be unique and give us the opportunity to provide a service that the customer will value and not forget.

    The Jewish Philosopher Hillel the Elder said, “If not you then who?  If not now then when?”  To me this sums up a lot of my attitude towards customer service and satisfaction.  When the financial arguments are clear, we end up earning more.  When the personnel implications are clear, we retain our staff longer and they have a more enjoyable experience in their roles.  Can we really afford not to give this aspect of our business the priority it deserves?

Have a Nice Day - Part 1

By Julian Rowlandson, sales director, Expand International (GB) 

     “Please listen carefully to the following 7 options so that we can more efficiently handle your inquiry” said the voice.  My heart sank if there is one thing in life that is certain to depress me it is this statement.  I positively hate dealing with call centers.  Sure enough 20 minutes later I was still trying to speak to a person about the problem I had.

       I am sure that we all can remember vivid examples of poor customer service.  We marvel at stories in the news and we think that we would never act like that.  However the reality is that around the world, companies do not have a good record of looking after customers and that is costing us business and impacting our margins.

     I recently saw a cartoon which showed two call center workers talking. One had said to the other “I followed correct procedure but the customer was not very happy”.  His colleague replied, “The customer clearly did not understand correct procedure then”.  Unfortunately this is often the attitude.  Not "what can we do to help" but “the computer says no”.

     Early on in my sales career I remember the attitude of others around me and how it did not really matter what you did as long as you got the order.  I always found this a little strange since I believed that I wanted to do the best I could for my customers not just consider them as the source of my next bonus payment.

     I began to consider the role of customer service and satisfaction with regard to the sales process and came to the consideration that customer service and satisfaction should be at least as important as the sale itself.

It would be fair to say that now I consider quality customer service to be more important to an organization than just the sales process.  Here are some of the reasons that I came to this conclusion:

• Nine out of ten customers will not tell you if they are unhappy, instead they’ll quietly find another provider and disappear.
• More than 75% of your customers are ready and willing to pay more for a product if it means they’ll get better customer service.
• It costs four to six times more to attract a new customer than it costs to retain a current customer.
• Sales figures tend to be a lagging indicator, they show what has happened. Customer satisfaction figures are a leading indicator since they show if you are headed towards a problem.
• A 5% reduction in customer churn can be worth as much as 35% boost to profits (Reichfield & Sasser)

     If we look just at the economics of taking care of our customers, it makes complete sense.  I worked for a software company sometime back as the Customer Services Director.  They had learned this lesson the hard way.  Needing to upgrade their software and being the market leader in their sector, they assumed an 80 – 85% take up of the new version.  In reality they had less than 60%.  The reason given by customers for not converting to the new product was that they felt unimportant and that customer service did not matter to the company.  With software, they were locked in, however given the opportunity to change, they took it and their decisions lost the company significant amounts of revenue. The end result was the the company needed to employ a customer service and satisfaction specialist.

To be continued...Please return for part two which will be added next week.

Expand International of America, Inc. purchases the newest latex printer from Hewlett Packard.

Expand International is proud to announce the addition of the 104” wide HP latex printer to their printing department.  The HP Latex machine allows for a wider range of printable materials from fabric to vinyl and can produce graphic panels at a true production speed with the highest of quality.  This wide-format printer provides Expand with the ability to produce graphics for most of Expand’s portable indoor displays as well as their outdoor flags and retractable banner stands.

New water-based HP Latex Inks provide many of the benefits of solvent-ink technology without imposing the typical environmental, health and safety considerations. Prints produced with HP Latex Inks are odorless and emit extremely low levels of volatile organic compounds.  No special ventilation is required, facilitating an improved printing environment. HP Latex Inks are not classified as hazardous waste and are non-flammable and non-combustible.

Expand Launches their LED spotlight

We will now offer an LED spotlight for our pop-up displays.

 

Expand’s new LED spotlight is environmentally friendly (19W) and complies with all CE, UL and CSA requirements and emits very little heat. Each of the eight LED's has a life expectancy of 50,000 hours.  A good quality halogen bulb only has an estimated life of 2,000 hours.  Over the life of this LED spotlight, it is far more cost effective than a traditional halogen spotlight.

What makes this LED different than other LEDs on the market?
The Expand LED Spotlight does not need a cooling fan. This is important because cooling fans will burn out long before the LED will. Once that fan burns out, the LED will soon overheat and burn out. The Expand LED Spotlight has a series of heat sinks which disperses heat through this set of metal 'fins' and heat displacing plastic cover.

These LED lights are recessed in the housing and have a special reflector which disperses the light more evenly and reduces 'hot spots' on your graphic panel. This reflector allows the light to use less LEDs and achieve more light!

The Expand LED Spotlight is considered a warm light on the Kelvin scale. Other LEDs on the market have such a bright white light that they actually appear to have a blue tint which has a cold, unwelcoming feel. Our light has a similar brightness/warmness to our 200 watt halogen light.

 

 

 

The new spotlight has a universal connector that fits the scissors ( X ) of Expand’s pop-up displays including the Expand 2000, Expand MediaWall, Expand MediaFabric and Expand BigFabric. For hub mounting such as on the Expand Tower (and other Expand Pop-ups), there is an included adapter that easily slides into place.

 

This spotlight will be ready for ordering now!

Go to the Expand LED Spotlight page

The Good the Bad and the Ugly

By Julian Rowlandson, sales director, Expand International (GB). 

Visit any trade show and they are there, the good the bad and the ugly. The good displays where the images and design make you feel that you could almost reach out and touch the product or sense the gentle wind blowing along the deserted beach.  The bad where it is difficult to take in the message being portrayed because of low quality graphics are poorly devised concept.  And the ugly, those displays where the images don’t join or are being held up by tape. Good exhibition graphics should hang flat, join seamlessly and tell the right story.

 

So what makes the difference between the good the bad and the ugly?  There are probably four main areas to consider.  Firstly production, secondly display hardware, thirdly concept and finally end user. 

 

This last element is probably the hardest to deal with because try as we might the final result will depend on how the client puts his display together, and possibly more importantly packs it away again.  Educating our customers in the correct use of systems and graphics gives more chance of our work looking good.

 

The creation of flat graphics that do not curl seems to be the biggest production challenge.  A few of the common causes for curl include atmospheric conditions, laminate tension, pressure and temperature and substrate/laminate incompatibility.

 

Once you have sorted out production issues consider the display hardware used, and here it is clear that not all systems were created equal.  A low priced system will often result in poorly displayed graphics.  A pop up stand where structure locks are not connected will lead to waves in the graphics and difficulties in getting the image lined up.  Low quality roller banners will struggle to keep graphics flat.

 

Julian Rowlandson of Expand International comments that is disappointing to see good graphics let down by poor quality stands.  ‘In my experience many clients would be prepared to pay more to ensure that they get great looking graphics’ says Rowlandson.

 

Products such as the Expand MediaScreen 1 (pictured below) have been specifically developed to be easy for clients to use, rugged and to display graphics well.

 

Finally messages should be simple, easy to understand.  Too often we see exhibition images that are so busy that the message gets lost.

 

A picture is worth a thousand words, or so the saying goes. With some care, the right equipment and a little time high-impact exhibition graphics will see the days of the bad and the ugly numbered.

 

View Expand's high-quality portable displays on their website: www.expandmedia.com/us