I am finding myself with a creative block. The company I work for, MJ Harden, is a geospatial services provider – aerial photography, digital mapping, and GIS. We are exhibiting at an important industry trade show in April in Phoenix, AZ.

As our sales have been affected by the recession like many other business, my goal is to create a really great promotional program for the show, but of course I am working with a shoestring budget.

As part of strategic planning, the push from the executive team has been to highlight our experience in the industry (been in business 50+ years and our founder was one of the pioneers in the development of photogrammetry with the USGS) – so we have developed the following tagline: Integrity. Quality. Dedication. And have also been using the following phrase in our literature and advertisements: . . . make our customers more successful.

I am trying to develop a theme idea from either our tagline – which will appear in new panels for our pop-up booth or develop an subtheme that plays off the show’s theme which is “Not Your Father’s GIS Conference.”

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Jay’s Answer: Get a very small, battery-powered, remote-control, small camera-based airplane (or helicopter) with an onboard wireless camera. Run it during the conference, with a live feed from it running to displays in your booth.

Tie this into a contest – capture images of a person once an hour from the camera, and if that person comes to your booth within the hour, they get a prize.