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I’ll be travelling to the International Building Show in Las Vegas next week but, for the first time ever going to an American trade show, the question in the headline will be lingering in the back of my mind.
Before I explain why, here’s a little look inside baseball at the relationship between trade media and trade shows.
In the weeks before any trade show, the larger exhibiting vendors that can afford PR firms or competent marketing departments start sending channel editors like me invitations to visit their booths. Their objective is twofold. They want to convince me that their product, service and/or company generally is worthy of editorial coverage in my post-show reporting. This, of course, amounts to free advertising for their brand. Secondly, they want to establish a business relationship and open up channels of communication so I will pay attention to their clients’ messages and use them as sources of content going forward. The overall objective is to enhance their clients’ brand with you, the Canadian renovator or homebuilder, so it will be top of mind the next time you are looking for their particular product or service.
My job of course is to be the gatekeeper in all this and only pass along information I think is of genuine use to you. Since there is effectively no way to fairly evaluate the claims of a vendor on a trade show floor, I almost never report on the things the PR agents want me to. However, there are benefits on my end to taking these meetings. The vendors are often great sources of information about the market and can provide valuable technical content in their area of expertise. And the business relationship is important as we try to persuade these vendors to do what they should be doing rather than paying expensive PR firms to try to hoodwink me into talking about them: advertise to you directly. Now, that isn’t my job, it’s the task of our intrepid brand manager, Navneet Matharu. But by taking the meetings and establishing the relationships, Navneet gets a link to the vendors even as they establish their link to me. When things go well they do some advertising, their PR agent is able to provide me with some valuable content for you that runs without charge, and everyone wins.
You will note from the above that all of this is really about you and the struggle for your attention. American vendors want to sell you stuff, and that imperative drives the entire trade show ritual and the trade media participation in it.
But now we are told from the top levels of American government that American businesses don’t benefit from trade with Canada. We are ripping them off, treating them unfairly and essentially extracting a subsidy for our economy through our trade agreements with the U.S. The damage is so extensive that the Trump administration feels compelled to violate our trade agreement (the proffered justifications are fake, unless you believe 40 pounds of fentanyl getting through the border is worth axing billions of dollars in business) to protect American businesses from this abuse. Even as IBS wraps up, Trump may impose 25 percent, across-the-board tariffs that would quickly drive Canada into a deep recession.
If that happens, what would the point have been of my efforts to go to IBS and all the efforts of the PR people and vendors to talk to me? In a post-tariff recession, you will be buying far less of everything and probably making a conscious attempt to buy Canadian when you do. The reduction in the IBS vendors’ Canadian business would far exceed any marginal bump they get from a meeting with me.
But even if the tariffs don’t happen, I have to wonder why I’m being invited down when our predatory practices here in Canada are so unfair to struggling American exporters. Surely they would be better off seeking fair deals at home, or with other countries. I hear Russia is keen to buy American products these days.
Come to think of it, some of you might be asking yourselves the same question. What is the benefit of a relationship with an American vendor who, if its government’s rhetoric is any indication, is losing money serving you? That they have enthusiastically served you, likely for decades, does make one wonder how they’ve survived with such poor business judgement. What are you doing down there?
Of course, the reason I am going (aside from non-refundable plane tickets) is that, by inviting me, IBS vendors have shown they don’t agree with Trump’s position on Canada and hope as we do that his threats of tariffs don’t come to pass. The show organizer, the National Home Builders Association, has made this explicit. But it feels like I’m clinging to the last shreds of a dying relationship that is unlikely to survive another four years of Trump. A lot of people I’ll be talking to in Vegas will have voted for this person. I think I’ll ask a few of them this question and see what kind of answer I get.