My (very) first encounter with branding things.

Who knows that nearly 6 years ago, my first professional project will lead me to the branding and marketing world; a completely different world for me as an international relations student who wildly dreams to become a diplomat one day.

My old notebook reminds me of my first experience handling a professional paid project for DomaiNesia. In 2016, DomaiNesia, a web hosting company based in Yogyakarta hired me to handle their first company exhibition project at one of the biggest tech expos in Yogyakarta. Six years later, I realized that was my very first encounter with this bizarre branding and marketing world. Here is my strategy as a complete newbie at that time with a limited budget and source:

Feature our Brand
Booth design must reflect our brand image: from the design logo to the color scheme throughout our trade show exhibit materials. We need to reinforce and build a reputation in the minds of new customers.
For DomaiNesia, our color schemes are light blue, white, and grey. We strictly use these three-color schemes for all of our stuff in the exhibition. From brochures to furniture.

Show our Best Side
Highlight whatever it is about our company that our target market typically most interested in.
For DomaiNesia, we proudly use our unique and cool website design for our backdrop design. Not to mention that we add our # of active customers, # of active products and services, and most importantly # of servers and locations. This short and brief data is crucial to show our credibility and capture visitor trust that 70% are aware of tech, internet, and web hosting.

Catch the Eye
Incorporate some form of movement or interaction into our booth design to catch the eyes of clients and attract attention.
For DomaiNesia, we design our booth to stand out with our signature light blue color. We placed our 43-inch HD TV in front of our booth and play an interactive video about domain and hosting. Next to the HD TV, we displayed our unique and cool homepage website on our iMac. These combos successfully grab the visitor's attention and make them pay a visit to our booth. Entering the booth, on the left side, we placed a wall art about our featured service, Instant Deploy. As the center of attention, we placed a white 4-seat office set up along with a grey Pixar desk lamp in the center of the room.

Give Stuff Away
Everyone loves freebies and moreover, freebies create a positive buzz about our brand. Freebies add value to the interaction between the brand and our customers, they give our customers positive feelings about our brand and they would love to share those positive feelings with others. Simple yet powerful marketing strategy.
For DomaiNesia, we prepare a lot of freebies and discounts such as t-shirts, goodie bags, exclusive discounts for the visitor expo, and mystery gifts by playing our roulette game.

Business expos and trade shows are venues for attracting potential clients to our company's products and services. For getting noticed, we need to design our booth in such a way that it's easy to identify and find in chaotic areas; and for DomaiNesia we successfully create a crowd and grab the attention of local media, bonus: we get a free publication.