Back to Barcelona with IBM & Cisco

Mobile World Congress, Barcelona 2022

After 2 years of pandemic disruption, Mobile World Congress (MWC), the world’s leading trade show for the connectivity industry, took place in Barcelona in February 2022. As the lead agency for Cisco’s global exhibition management & IBM’s global strategic events partner, GPJ was there to guide our clients and create memorable and successful attendee experiences for both Cisco and IBM.

There were plenty of challenges, including a shortened lead time, materials shortages and other pandemic safety concerns, and the always-present risk that the event would be cancelled. As always, our teams collaborated and strategised, even reusing some previous IBM and Cisco materials, as we always do when we can to save our clients money and reduce our environmental footprint.

CREATIVE SOLUTIONS

For Cisco, we created a two-story experience that included meeting suites, public and private demo areas, open hospitality areas & interview/broadcast areas, with a strong focus on a C-level audience. The use of LED wall elements and lighting features guaranteed high recognition value from close and from afar, and the use of high-quality materials and an overall elegant look & feel was a great fit for the audience.

For IBM, which also had a strong focus on a C-level audience, we created 6 meeting and board rooms, an open lounge area for the public, and a private solution lab for deep dives into IBM solutions. We also showcased IBM and Boston Dynamics Spot robot to the public audience, which was a huge draw as an activation and prompted widespread sharing on social media.

RESULTS

Our strategy, concept, architecture, design, event services, technical services and procurement talents were all put to work, with multiple GPJ offices collaborating across North America and Europe, and the results were better than we’d hoped for. Overall, MWC had 61.000+ attendees and 1.900 exhibitors. The attendees were 50% director level or above, as well. A full meeting schedule for both clients throughout all 4 days helped them to reach their targets and results, and we received fantastic feedback from clients and attendees. MWC was a banner event, signalling to the events industry that in-person, live events are indeed back!