Wednesday, November 03, 1999

Trick or Treat?!


It was cold, wet and rainy, but nonetheless I braced myself against the wind, tightened my coat around me a little closer and charged towards the flurry the AdTech expo created from November 1st thru 3rd.

I started off the day at the actual conference, (what a concept!), and noticed a few interesting trends. Just in case you didn't have a little kid to go trick-or-treating with on Halloween, exhibitors at the AdTech booths in the New York Hilton made up for it in spades. DeepCanyon.com had an assortment of rock candy chocolates and sweets, eCommercial.com was doling out bags of popcorn, CyberDialogue served up fresh Krispy Kremes, Snowball.com was scooping their classic iced tread (also served at Internet World) and Sabela Media lured visitors with giant-sized gooey cookies. Mixed in-between every other booth had a bowl of candy for trick-or-treaters-er--expo attendees. And if treats weren't your bag, there were toys to take--pogo.com pushed their playing cards and BrightStreet.com balanced rows of Yellow Rubber Duckies outfitted as cowboys, professors, nurses and other assorted characters.

I stopped to thank Mr. Larry Chase for mentioning me in his newsletter, just after he grilled some reps at PRN about their products. Eileen Schulock, the graceful grand-masteress of his newsletter, Larry Chase's Web Digest For Marketers, and I also chatted about busy schedules. Whitney Gould of PR21 greeted me at the Solbright booth where Arthur McKinley told me he just moved on from Winstar to this company as VP of business development. We mused with Sharon Tolpin (dir. corp. communications) about Solbright utilizing the talents of his friend Elvis Sinatra for parties. Art said Elvis and some other Internet music stars are competing in the MP3 All Stars soon.

Although the sound was off, Joseph Timmons and Joshua Greenberg of I-Traffic were playing their company testimonials. Classically outfitted to the T, the I-traffic booth took advantage of its corporate color orange with an orange lava lamp, orange wrapped candy and orange sunflowers, which I was informed greet each new employee on their desk the first day they start.

Nicole Kikoski was looking a little pixelated, but then I figured it was just because she was reduced to a 1/2-inch square -- on her business card that is. Yes indeed, Comet Systems has gone so far with their fun and successful customized comet cursor idea, that they now have redesigned their cards to include each person's picture. Nicole showed me some demos of recent work and the new Cometized Banner they're distributing through a new partnership with 24/7 (announced at the conference). And front and center were my old pals with the cutting edge ideas and products, Thinking Media. CEO Owen Davis spoke at the conference and they were displaying two recent articles from Release 1.0 and Advertising Age.