Is your next show won or lost before you've even left the car park?

The incredible shrinking shuttle 

A couple of weeks ago I was at DVD 2026 with Fering Technologies, supporting with their PR and marketing following their Light Mobility Vehicle (LMV) bid. First, though, I have to mention the queues, because everyone else has. 

We were waiting for a bus back to the car park, so we could queue all over again, when the buses stopped coming, stuck in traffic themselves. A minibus eventually got through, starting the joke that each new vehicle would be smaller than the last. Right on cue, a minivan appeared. 

Next, we decided, would be a Mini, then a tuk-tuk, a moped, a Segway and finally CGS offering piggybacks. After 90 minutes of queuing, I got on the minivan, so I'll never know how much it shrunk. 

Six hours of queuing made for some cracking conversations with strangers, but it isn't what anyone came for. It did, however, get me thinking. Stuck in those queues were exactly the people every exhibitor wanted to reach, with nothing to do for three hours each way but scroll. It was probably the best advertising space at DVD, and none of it was on a stand. 

Won before the gates open 

That's the real lesson. When getting in and out swallows the day, nobody has time to wander. People go to the stands they'd already planned to visit, meet whoever they'd already arranged to meet, and head for the queue home. 

Which is why, for me, the show is won in the eight weeks before it. If the right people have read about you before they set off, have a meeting in the diary and are coming to find you, you've done the hard bit. If not, you're hoping they'll wander past, and nobody's wandering. 

Why Fering had further to go 

Queues aside, one conversation dominated DVD, and that was LMV, the programme to replace the British Army’s Land Rovers. Few vehicles are as woven into the British Army's story as the Land Rover, so it's no surprise the race to succeed it drew the crowds. Plenty of companies chose the show to unveil their contenders, and everywhere you looked people were comparing options, climbing in and out of cabs and queueing (again) for test drives. Most are one generation on from the Defender. They look and feel like Land Rovers. Fering's Pioneer is the only electric contender, and arguably two generations on. It’s very different. 

That's a harder sell. Before an operator will back the Pioneer, they must imagine a new way of working: a different logistics burden, silent or self-sufficient running, roughly the width of Africa on one tank and one charge.  

The traditional replacements don't have to make that leap. So, our job was to get the operational impact across quickly and clearly enough for an operator to picture it, and work harder with the naysayers. And it all must happen before the show, because very few people change their thinking in a ten-minute stand visit. 

Where the money really stands 

But what DVD really reinforced for me was bigger than any single programme. I've been to a lot of shows over the past year and, to be honest, many of them were depressing. People didn't know where the money was coming from, or whether it was coming at all. The long-promised investment in UK defence business always seemed to be just around the corner. And if I'd heard 'when will the DIP be published?' one more time, I'd have written it and published it myself.  

Thankfully, I didn't have to. We now have the 2025 Strategic Defence Review, the Defence Industrial Strategy AND the Defence Investment Plan. It's all here, and industry finally has the framework it's been asking for.  

But industry knows the money isn't quite flowing yet. Of the plan's £15 billion uplift, £4.7 billion is still to be confirmed at the Budget on 28 October, and the 3% of GDP date has been pushed to the next Spending Review. The MOD is gearing up to release opportunities as soon as the Treasury allows. 

So, the mood has shifted from 'will it come?' to 'when, and who gets it?' You can feel the difference. The events, conferences and shows I go to have life in them again. There's energy in the halls, there's optimism in the conversations and, dare I say it, there might even be a bit of hope in the air, and this is the moment to have your story ready. 

Is your story ready? 

The companies that do well will be the ones that can explain clearly what they offer and why it matters to those who serve. We help engineers and scientists explain their technology to the people who buy it, fund it and back it. 

If you have a show booked in February or March and you're not sure your story is ready, that's the conversation to have now, before the Budget lands.