FIL – Feira Internacional de Luanda
You know what is fun? Trade shows and fairs. You know what isn’t fun? Planning a trade show without an office, a way to communicate effectively with your employees, having all your marketing materials hidden in storage, while your marketing coordinator sick with malaria. Oh, and finding out you only have a few days to get everything together. But, such was last week in Luanda.
FIL is the international business trade show in Luanda. I have been to a few trade shows in the US before and my expectations for this show in Angola were low. However, I was surprised by the professionalism of the stands and the people working them. It was really quite extravagant. FIL is located outside of Luanda and is essentially large pavilions and temporary buildings. All the major oil operators and suppliers are there to promote their products and services. Here are some pictures of our stand and pavilion.
For the most part things went smoothly, up until the last day when we wanted to take our materials down and load up the cars. Basically it was pandemonium. You needed tickets to enter into FIL and at during the last hours of the week long event, hundreds of people were trying to sneak into FIL for “brinde” (free stuff like pens, t-shirts, hats, ect.). This forced security to close the gates and prevented me from entering back into FIL. I finally got in, but trying to leave was just as bad. You needed stamped documentation that the stuff you were taking out was yours. Of course, by the time I finally got into FIL, the office that stamps your documentation was closed. 4 hours later we arrived back to the hotel with a pickup truck of our marketing materials. Needless to say, FIL wasn’t the most fun I have had in Angola.
