Demo Kits That Crossed the Pond

9 Oct 2022

On 9 Oct 2022 a New York demo week almost opened with a beautiful deck and an empty table. The London sample kit (the annotated mailers, the cheap devices we use to show a funnel, the printed teardown) was still on a Baker Street shelf. Someone had booked flights. Nobody had booked the cases.

I have watched this movie in inbound marketing for years. The talk is about getting found. The week of the talk is about whether the props exist. A growth story that needs a physical object is not a thought experiment. It is a logistics ticket.

We rebuilt the morning. Local print filled one gap. A borrowed monitor filled another. The kit that actually taught the room something arrived a day late, which is a polite way to say the first session was thinner than it should have been.

Since that October I ask a blunt question before any transatlantic demo: what has to be in the room that cannot be a PDF? If the list is longer than a laptop sleeve, assign a packer and a delivery window. London to New York is a short sentence and a long van ride.

9 Oct 2022 is now a private anniversary for me. Not because the talk failed. Because it taught a room of marketers that innovation still has a weight in kilograms.