We were stoked to attend our first Surf Expo, Sept. 5-7 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, and the exhibitor community proved very friendly and welcoming, eager to show off their products and beach-inspired booths. From wetsuits to bucket hats to flip flops, we explored the variety of exhibits that made up the largest and longest-running watersports, beach and resort lifestyle trade show, and noticed five exhibit design and build trends that were unique to Surf Expo and the watersports audience.

As the Florida heat was raging outside, Surf Expo brought cool, beachy vibes from the watersports and coastal lifestyle industries to Orlando’s Orange County Convention Center (OCCC), Sept. 5-7. More than 6,000 qualified buyers from global retailers explored 650-plus exhibitor booths that showcased products from surf, beach and resort categories, ranging from swimsuits and sportswear to marine plush and souvenir gifts.

AARP, the association for people 50 and older, is all about popping up in unexpected spaces where it can engage its current audience as well as the next generation. When the Rolling Stones approached AARP to sponsor the ’24 Hackney Diamonds North American Tour, which hit 16 cities from April to July, the brand saw an opportunity to satisfy that dual-purpose strategy and supersize on surprise and delight.

It was out with the old and in with the new at Quest Software’s 2024 internal sales conference in Anaheim, CA, as the brand overhauled the annual event with a festival-inspired theme designed to support its forward-looking company vision.

Programmatic is taking center stage in a courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia. Since Monday, the mechanics of online ad auctions, header bidding and Google’s dynamic allocation and unified pricing rules have been discussed as part of the antitrust trial against Google, which kicked off this week but has been years in the making. AdExchanger has been […]

OMD Worldwide Chief Media Officer Ben Hovaness, thinks the advertising world might be thinking about the open internet wrong way, right down to the terminology we use to describe it.

Campaign planners are the oracles of advertising, poring over prior results, designing A/B tests, identifying target audiences and crafting compelling messages to maximize the chance of success. Through well-honed hunches and cold hard data, advertising mixes art and science to peer into the future.  Now, AI is ushering in the next frontier of brand-on-brand competition. […]

DirecTV has lost a not immaterial number of customers as a result of its carriage impasse with Disney, according to CMO Vince Torres.

MAGIC, Project, and Sourcing at Magic, three fashion trade shows run by MMGNET Group, returned to the Las Vegas Convention Center from August 19-21, bringing unique perspectives on fashion and activating for diverse apparel markets. “Each new season gives us an opportunity to bring fresh perspectives and new topics to explore within the fashion industry, […]

Taylor Swift’s media savvy never ceases to amaze even the most seasoned PR professionals. Many communicators had something to say about her presidential endorsement and how she delivered it.