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“Day after day, I realize the difficulty of creating
something from nothing.”
Im Taek, head of the KINTEX marketing team, gave
this remark when asked of difficulties in making
achievements such as the attraction of 28 exhibitions,
including the so-called “Big 5” shows.
His marketing team was formed two years ago in January
2003 even before the first “shoveling” began for
the construction of KINTEX. They had to do marketing
only with the blueprint for the construction of
KINTEX and its future operation plan; KINTEX had
little name recognition at that time. Considering
this situation, itgoes without saying that his team
had to “create something out of nothing.”
There were no references, no manuals, no benchmarking
objects because the history of the domestic exhibition
industry was too short and the scale, facilities
and marketing target of KINTEX were much different
from those of other existing Korean exhibition
centers at that time.
”After developing creative ideas, we had to cope
with every challenge one at a time,” Mr.Im said
while explaining the efforts they have made. It
has been determined that 28 large-scale exhibitions,
including the Seoul Motor Show, will be held at
KINTEX. This number will have to be revised sooner
or later, he said, observing that negotiations
were under way over other exhibitions.
Its characteristics of the biggest exhibition
center in Korea, having state-of-the-art facilities,
as well as an international exhibition level are
things to be proud of. To the marketing team,
however, all these characteristics could be burdens
because all the staff members had to prepare 'the
software' equal to 'the world-level hardware.'
The range of software that the marketing team had
to check was very wide from establishing middle-
and long-term marketing strategies to inducing exhibitions
and leasing and managing exhibition halls.
KINTEX advocating itself as an international exhibition
hall, the marketing team also had to do overseas
marketing. It was not an easy task, either.
On many occasions, they came in contact with doubtful
international exhibition-related experts or overseas
exhibition organizers and sponsors. They had to
convince the foreigners that KINTEX would really
be on an international level.
To get familiar with English-speaking environment,
they conduct their private meetings in English.
As a result of their endless efforts, they were
successful in making the MOU on business cooperation
with the Singapore Expo and are actively conducting
various working-level talks with 15 organizations
in Asia and Europe.
Officials of the world’s largest-scale organizations
in the field, the Italian FIERA MILANO and the Chinese
CIEC, visited the KINTEX site and, after on-site
inspections, they proceeded to have a concrete discussion
concerning business agreements.
"Generally, they were surprised at the scale
and state-of-the-art facilities of KINTEX and they
have a lot of expectations on the possibility of
KINTEX as an exhibition and business hub of Northeast
Asia," added an official of KINTEX. The KINTEX
marketing team members, who have made frequent contacts
with foreign exhibition experts, now have the confidence
that KINTEX will live up to the expectations.
"We are working with a solid resolve that we
can reshuffle the Korean exhibition industry market,"
said the 11 KINTEX marketing team members, thus
re-enforcing the image of 2005 to be the year of
creating a new history for them.
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