Doubling up at Mobile World Congress

How we optimised the opportunities to make maximum impact at MWC23 for our clients AWS and JMA.

This year’s Mobile World Congress, the world’s biggest connectivity solutions show, presented exciting opportunities for two of our clients to attract the attention of the thousands of visitors that perfectly fitted the profile of potential customers. On the one hand, cloud giant AWS, occupying arguably the event’s largest space, wanted to sharpen the messaging around its strong transformational offer to telcos, while also creating a cohesive customer experience across its multi-room presence. On the other, JMA needed to turn heads in a sea of LED screens and innovative technology, while quickly introducing visitors to its solutions and the benefits they bring. 

TAKING TELCOS TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Like last year, AWS took over a large corner area on the upper level of the Fira Barcelona. But this year, the telco team were looking to make a bigger impact and better use of the space. The challenge for our team was to create a MWC23 campaign with messaging that would not only engage and excite show visitors, but also serve the telco team going forward. It was also key to present a cohesive customer journey that would help guide visitors through the various AWS spaces. These ranged from demonstration areas and a studio space for talks and presentations, to a smart home-themed lounge and large executive meetings zone. 

Tying together the upper-floor location with the fact that AWS was presenting solutions that accelerate telcos’ digital transformation, we came up with the concept ‘Experience the next level with AWS’. This proved ideal for guiding visitors to the unconventional MWC space on the first floor, while highlighting the key benefit AWS solutions deliver to the sector. 

We rolled out the messaging, accompanying graphics and refreshed branding not only across all signage and content collateral for the event, including attendee guide, demonstration decks, videos and more, but also recreated the AWS Telco website to support all the content. Plus, we ensured the various rooms made sense from a customer journey perspective, so visitors intuitively moved from one to another. 

The constant buzz around the AWS space throughout MWC23 showed our messaging and signage was working wonders. Meanwhile, the AWS team were delighted with the clarity of messaging, the cohesion of the customer story, and the interactive and engaging nature of the demonstrations. Overall, the AWS presence was seen as a major evolution from 2022. 

VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

JMA designs and delivers cutting-edge wireless technology solutions that enable faster, more reliable and more secure networks for consumers and businesses. With a rapidly evolving solutions portfolio, our mission was to ensure visitors left the show with JMA firmly in mind by making the company’s regular-size booth extraordinary enough to stand out among the hundreds of exhibitors at the event. Of course, simply standing out wasn’t enough. Visitors with big demands on their time and plenty of other distractions had to be able to quickly work out what JMA was all about and the benefits it delivers. 

With this firmly in mind, we worked closely with JMA’s stand builders to create a unique user experience that would not only draw potential customers onto the stand, but also keep them there. Borrowing from JMA’s logo, we worked with JMA to come up with the concept of people entering the stand through a large welcoming arch. As they passed through, visitors would find themselves immersed in a looped 3D video playing on the underside of the arch and running onto the floor through LED tiles. The content succinctly summed up JMA’s key propositions through snapshots of four highly engaging use cases, linked with the AR app content. 

This set the scene for visitors’ next encounter: an interactive table featuring four striking 3D-printed scenes that invited them to dive deeper into the use cases by passing an iPad over a relevant section. This immediately brought to life the 3D models on the iPad screen, creating a vivid, immersive AR experience. This enabled visitors to find out more details about the use cases via 3D fly-throughs, technical details and explanatory videos. Additional touch points on the stand presented further 3D experiences that enabled visitors to discover more about JMA at their own pace. 

The stand proved a real attention-grabber, wowing not just visitors, but the entire JMA team, with the CEO stating it set a new benchmark for the company’s trade show presence. As well as attracting lots of visitors, throughout the event passers-by stopped to take photos, with the MWC organisers themselves using the booth as a backdrop for part of their show filming. We can confidently report that the stand played a key role in putting JMA firmly on the global telco map.

UNTIL NEXT YEAR…

To deliver two contrasting yet equally successful experiences at MWC23 was hugely exciting and rewarding for our team, which were on the ground supporting both clients throughout the show. And we can’t wait to find out what next year will bring!

JPC associate Tim Lennard MSc, FCA, BA has 30 years’ experience in B2B sales and marketing and an MSc in Applied Psychology and Economic Behaviour. His 2022 study is entitled ‘Bias in Commercial Contract Renewals – the case for a Nudge’.