Bye-Bye Nexpo: NAA Launching New Industry Show to Emphasize Digital

By: Mark Fitzgerald Nexpo -- the U.S. newspaper industry's largest, but ever-shrinking equipment show -- is no more.

The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) will announce formally Tuesday that it is replacing Nexpo and the NAA Marketing Conference with an annual conference to be called NAA mediaXchange.

The first mediaXchange, scheduled for March 9 to 11, 2009, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, will include a show floor of exhibiting production vendors, but it will be much more focused on digital offerings -- and, in sessions held on the show floor, strategies to grow audience and revenue.

This is not about taking the old Nexpo and the old Marketing Conference and gluing them together in some way," Kevin McCourt, NAA's vice president/ advertising and exhibition sales, told E&P. "This is a dramatic shift from Nexpo and the Marketing Conference, a positive shift in energy."

MediaXchange reflects the announced change in mission at the downsized NAA to focusing on helping members increase audience and revenue.

Surveys and focus groups of attendees at the two shows "identified the need for a single event that was even more cross-functional" in session topics and exhibitors, McCourt added.

A single show will be easier on attendee's travel budgets -- and exhibitors, he added. "It offers fewer exhibitions, frankly, because there were a lot of companies that exhibited at both shows."

Vendors will be able to show products and services "in full trade show display, rather than in a hotel ballroom format," as they had been at the Marketing Conference, McCourt said: "They're not constrained by physical spaces any more."

McCourt said NAA mulled acting on a frequent suggestion heard as each successive Nexpo attracted less and less show floor traffic -- hold a big industry show every other year.

There were problems with that, McCourt said.

First, "our members want a place to gather at least annually where they can exchange ideas, and meet among themselves, and they said they will gather whether or not there's a trade show."

And from a vendors point of view, he added, "many of them do not have a product or product life cycle that would thrive in a less-than-annual format." Even among those who supported an every-other-year show, there was disagreement on which year to skip, McCourt added.

So NAA is telling vendors: "We welcome you in the years you want to come, but there is no arm-twisting in the years you don't want to."

NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm in the show announcement noted that speakers will be invited from both inside and outside the industry "to form a marketplace of ideas" to grow readership, online audience, and revenue streams.

"This exchange will spread to the show floor as companies serving all facets of the industry -- from production and digital platforms to advertising solutions -- will offer innovative products and services to help newspapers excel in today's environment," Sturm said.

NAA's announcement explains that the "X" in mediaXchange "symbolizes the fluidity" of the many "unknowns" in the business world, "while also alluding to the event's key theme -- an exchange of information, a marketplace where colleagues meet to exchange success stories and ideas to drive advertising, grow audience and generate revenue."