Newspaper & Mailroom
Revamped Expo stands the test in Berlin
Tuesday 31. October 2017 - 25% increase in visitors
exhibitors praise high-level engagement
100+ speakers deliver
Over the past three days, news media specialists from all over the world gathered in Berlin for the new dual IFRA World Publishing and DCX Digital Content Expos, evaluating emerging technologies, innovations and trends sweeping the industry. With nearly 5000 visits and 181 exhibitors on hand, the increased participation is a solid signal that the event still resonates with this industry and holds promise for expansion.
A total of 4,934 visits (25% more than last year) were made to the event from 10 to 12 October. With more than 100 speakers on four stages and the array of suppliers on hand – from startups to established players across the multimedia spectrum – visitors had a plethora of opportunities to engage and network with the industrys leading innovators.
Likewise, exhibitors praised the quality of contacts they attracted and emphasised the need for such a global platform for technical solutions that supports the transformation of news media.
Expo as leading indicator of innovations and trends
“Expo has always been a leading indicator of the innovations and trends taking place in our industry and this years event backed that up,” said Vincent Peyrègne, CEO of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) that now co-organises the event with its partner, Publishing Exhibition. “The initial results and feedback from both visitors and exhibitors are encouraging.”
Alexander Petsch, CEO of Publishing Exhibition GmbH, said: “On the exhibitor side, we have launched a trend reversal: after declining exhibitor numbers in the last years, these have now risen significantly again. Six from the 10 biggest IFRA exhibitors, that are huge players in the print industry, are back. For DCX, our team could convince the biggest 10 exhibitors of digital solutions to come back. For next year, we want to expand the target group even further, attract more corporate publishers and marketing and content experts to the show.”
Experiences of exhibitors: Good quality and valuable experiences
“Our expectations were slightly exceeded. We observe that our solutions trigger thought processes within news publishing houses and that they openly consider where transformation can lead them to. The expo is increasingly becoming a platform for learning processes and individual customisation of solutions.”
Annika Schulz, Manager Marketing & Communications, ppi Media GmbH
“The show was better for us this year than before. We had more frequency of visits and the quality of visits were good.”
Klaus Schmidt, Director of Marketing & Corporate Communications, Koenig & Bauer
“Our customers were here and want to continue to come as the expo is a very necessary platform for them, so we want to help to keep it alive.”
Christian Seitz, Marketing Officer for manroland
“It was our first expo, where we could test our solution out on a bigger market. Overall it has been a good experience for us and we had some really good leads. There were the right people. It is more about quality than quantity.”
Christoffer Birch-Jensen, Business Development Director, Norkon Computing System
“The leads we got the last few days here have been valuable and relevant for us. It has been interesting to see such a comprehensive spectrum in one expo – all the way from digital innovation, like AI in publishing, to people that are optimimising paper publishing. To experience a crowd that is so diverse, and yet focused on similar problems, has certainly provided great perspective.”
Mario Vasilescu, CEO, Rewordly Inc.
“We are satisfied and would say we had a better year than last year. There were quite a few German visitors, from Poland, Belgium, and interestingly, some from Malaysia, India and Russia, for example.”
Katia Fasola, Marketing and Business Development Manager, Tecnavia
“It was interesting to see visitors from Japan and Korea, and we had very positive meetings with them. In general, our customers are not looking for a system but ways to drive their business transformation. And we feel like we are in that field.”
Jacob Gjørtz, Vice President Marketing for CCI