After several years of COVID-influenced lockdowns and cancellations, trade shows are making a huge comeback. A tremendous amount of pent-up demand is driving a veritable tidal wave of events in 2023—both live and virtual.

The logistics of staging such events have, however, have evolved significantly thanks in large part to COVID-19. Shifting demographics, changing trends, and the widespread adoption of new technologies designed to deal with restrictions imposed by the lockdown are changing the event landscape.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been exploring recent trends that are influencing how businesses are spending their marketing budgets these days, first introduced in a blog post on the PPAI Expo back in January. Those trends include an industry-wide move towards more conscious consumerism as well as a growing preference for buying promotional items based on well-known retail brands.

Even in today’s online world, marketing collateral management—the production, storage and distribution of printed materials that promote a company’s products and services—is still a critical discipline. While these materials can take many forms—data sheets, brochures, white papers, technical documentation, educational tools and many more—how you manage them must be consistent, organized and logical to ensure they convey the right message about your organization.

A recent blog post highlighted various trends that are influencing how businesses are currently spending their budgets.

We detailed one of those trends, conscious consumerism, in late February. With this post, we are examining a second: a preference by customers for well-known retail brands when it comes to branded promotional items.