MCVB Wins Best Stand Award at AIME 2003

Melbourne Convention + Visitors Bureau (MCVB) has beaten a strong field of national and international exhibits to win the Best Multi Stand Award at AIME 2003. Reflecting Melbourne’s and Victoria’s style, architecture and technology focus, the stand brought together 19 venues and suppliers, in the largest Melbourne showcase ever at AIME.

The Award, judged independently by CIM magazine, was presented at the AIME 2003 Gala Dinner in Melbourne last week.

“We were thrilled to win the award following the effort that went into the stand design this year,” said Keren Southgate, Director of Sales, MCVB, who collected the Award for the Bureau.

“We worked closely with Expo Hire to lighten the feel of our stand, to make it open and non threatening to enter. To do this we replaced last year’s solid dividers with yellow see through Perspex. Exhibitors still had privacy but the feel was open. We reversed the position of the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre (MECC) and MCVB to allow the stand to expand. MECC also encompassed our look and feel this year by creating the matching tower,” she said.

“Another new feature was the totally blank overhead banners, which we used to project logos and to present the Think Victoria and Think Melbourne brands in a multi-media format. This reflected Melbourne’s strong multi-media and technology industries, while at the same time created awareness of the stand from a distance. We also used plush carpet for the whole stand area including the aisle, which added to the open feel.”

Andrew Field, account manager for Expo Hire, the company that designed and built the stand, said the brief was to create a design to reflect Melbourne and Victoria as a high technology State.

“The design was inspired by current architectural projects around Melbourne such as Federation Square. The themes for our design were ‘technology’ and ‘construction’ to reflect the major developments taking place in Melbourne and capture the image of Victoria and Melbourne as a hi-tech, cutting edge destination. We represented technology three dimensionally and used a range of finishes such as polished aluminium, tinted transparent acrylics and silver metallic graphics that shimmered,” Mr Field said.

“The stand’s feeling of spaciousness was created by using transparent materials. Colour choice was based on the Think Victoria brand using yellow and purple, with charcoal - used often in Melbourne architecture - added to create that true Melbourne style.”

MCVB is delighted with the feedback from exhibitors and delegates, who found the stand achieved its goal - it drove delegates to the stand.

“The destination pull of the stand was immense. People were drawn to the stand to see the diverse range of quality business event suppliers from Melbourne. This united marketing drive was a great success, with some Melbourne exhibitors in close proximity to our stand, deciding to join MCVB next year,” Ms Southgate said.