I am not a fan of using Trade Shows and / or lures at trade shows for marketing purposes. So I was hugely impressed by CPC, an industrial coffee kitchen catering company, when they appeared at LegalTech.

Why? On the face of it, their presence made no sense. The trade show was about technology for law firms – servers, software, storage. It was attended by IT professionals. Why should a bunch of coffee-stockers attend?

The answer was of course brilliant, which was that for the majority of small law firms, their entire infrastructure (including facilities, eg the purchasers of coffee-stocking services) reports to the same decision-maker.

Who was at this show, because tech decisions are expensive.

So CPC had just positioned themselves to meet directly with the decision-makers, all at once, in a venue where CPC faced no competition.

Additionally, CPC’s execution was flawless. They set up at the entrance / exit to the main floor, and their booth looked like an actual coffee vendor… but with a big price-board declaring the price of each item listed to be “one business card”.

So picture yourself as a tired executive. You want coffee. It’s there in front of you, it’s free, and all you need to do is trade a business card. And chat with the nice servers, who are also salespeople.

You rest a moment, the coffee is great, the people are nice, and the cost of their service seems quite reasonable in comparison to the technology you’ve just seen.

I believe that CPC sold more at that show than most other vendors there. Brilliant marketing… and not a bad cup of hot chocolate, either.

[ps: Please buy my book. http://buynow.stupidmarketing.com -- and tell your friends!]