At MACEF January 2008
"where the world is at home"
MACEF Spring 2008, International Home Show, will be held at fieramilano from 18 to 21 January, concurrently with Festivity, the Christmas, Carnival and party decorations, games and toys Show (which will, however, open its doors two days before on 16 January and close on Sunday 20th). The Gifts Area will also open a day early (on Thursday 17th) at the request of the exhibitors to be able to operate over five days because of their high volume of business and contacts. Altogether no less than 2,800 companies will be exhibiting (of which around 25% from abroad) in more than 150 thousand square metres of space.
These numbers make MACEF one the biggest, most attractive trade shows in the world. The January edition will be the 84th in the series inaugurated in September 1964 (in its first years MACEF was held once a year). The most significant change is that the Spring edition will be organized in five worlds.
Macef - starting off the January edition
with a new publicity campaign
The next edition of MACEF, the International Home Show, which will be held from 18 to 21 January 2008, will be promoted during the coming months by a new publicity campaign.
The idea for the MACEF campaign arose from a desire to represent the vast opportunities offered by the exhibition in a creative, innovative way.
Fruit of the creative minds of Emilio Haimann and Marco Ravanetti, of Art Directors Fabio Prestianni and Luigi Longobardo and copywriter Lino Cannavacciuolo, all of the Hi! Comunicazione agency, the campaign has a strong dream-like feel: a girl seated on a sphere floats lightly in a space filled with colours, flowers and fantasy. Lots of perfect, transparent spheres like many worlds, inspired by the shapes of design, represent the various Macef exhibition areas.
Getting ready for Festivity:
all the latest about the 2008 edition
All the latest decorations for Christmas, Carnival, Easter, Halloween and other festive occasions will be featured at the next edition of Festivity scheduled for 16 to 20 January 2008 at the Rho-Pero exhibition centre.
The show, which runs concurrently with MACEF (scheduled for 18 to 21 January) will occupy 16.000 square metres this year, with over 100 companies present in Halls 22 and 24, confirming its place as an essential appointment for both Italian and European specialists, wholesalers and large-scale retail buyers, who will find all the suggestions, previews and latest ideas for 2008.
Special mention has to be made of the significant growth in terms of presences and exhibition space at Festivity 2008 of the games and toys and paper/packaging and party goods sectors. The development of this latter sector, which shares an affinity with decorations in terms of purchases and distribution channels, will create new opportunities and synergies at Festivity for all visitors to the show.
Christmas Village 2008
This year the “Christmas Village” will once again offer Festivity visitors and exhibitors a meeting place for moments of relaxation and wellbeing. The slogan for the 2008 edition Village will be “Alto Adige: unforgettable enogastronomy and emotions” and will include a foot massage point, presentation of Alto Adige’s tourist attractions and apples handed out by girls in traditional costume. During happy hour there tastes will be offered of local products such as speck, cheeses, bread, strudel, apple juice and wines.
Several institutional stands will be present in the “Christmas Village” area, including:
- The International Toy Show;
- Assogiocattoli;
- Italian Toy Safety Institute;
- Customs and Excise;
A free consultancy service will be available at these stands for all Festivity operators and exhibitors on the topics of counterfeit goods, safety of electrical and other products, the CE mark and updates and clarifications on the RAEE, RoHS, Ftalates directives etc.
The Toy Fair office, together with the Fiera Milano International office, can be contacted for all information in this regard.
The campaign, which has been conceived with the intention of restoring great prestige to the show through a new, elegant image with a strong impact, perfectly combines the warmth and serenity of the domestic environment with the innovation and modernity of design.
The slogan MACEF. Where the world is at home, expresses and sums up MACEF’s openness to the latest Italian and international design ideas for the home and the person.
The campaign will be aired in the specialist press in the coming months and will be distributed throughout Italy, Europe and the rest of the world. The new image will also appear on all communications material in support of the show.
“In this way we want to recognize the large aggregations of products in a multi-sector show like MACEF – explains exhibition director, Nello Martini – and at the same time underline the centrality and universality of the home, which is the core of MACEF”.
The five product groups are TABLE AND KITCHEN (articles for the table and products for the kitchen); FURNISHINGS AND DECORATION (Furnishing accessories, decorations, textiles and design objects); CLASSIC (Classic furnishing accessories, bomboniere and silver objects for the home), GIFTS (Fancy goods, gift articles and stationery); BIJOUX, GOLD AND ACCESSORIES (Gold and costume jewellery, accessories). “The strategy used to bring together (and then arrange) the five containers was to suggest the vastness and the fragmentation of MACEF as an aggregation not so much of products as actual “show containers” (some with different dates and durations), also with a view to a greater and better identification and positioning of each of these worlds in the future” says Martini.
Deserving of a special mention is the Creazioni area/event, organized in collaboration with Consorzio Artex, the Centre for Artistic and Traditional Tuscan Crafts, and designed to provide a space for those not so few traditional crafts enterprises (not exclusively Italian) able to produce small series of objects characterized by a high degree of creativity and mastery. Creazioni brings together truly original research and skills that give the professional visitor unique, appreciable signs that differentiate MACEF and make it recognizable on the international trade fair scene. Creazioni will be in Hall 1.
The publicity campaign devised by Hi Communication also underlines the same concept. “With the slogan where the world is at home – says Martini - MACEF wants to reiterate its commitment to building an international show on two fronts – that of the exhibitor and that of the visitor. The internationality of the visitors, which has increased over the past few years, is guaranteed by the fact that MACEF, to a greater extent and better than any other trade fair event, represents “made in Italy”, that is, the design and production of thousands of mainly small or medium businesses whose market is the world and who are able to attract thousands of buyers to Milan and to Italy.
However, these buyers want to compare Italian with international production. And so it is that MACEF, while it remains the great “made in Italy” show, has been able to count for years on an average of 25% foreign exhibitors – businesses that come to Italy to penetrate the Italian market (among the ten richest in the world) or to meet their foreign clients here in Milan.
International promotion of the International Home Show is very active. In 2007 alone, MACEF was present with a very special “promotion desk” at the Chicago International Home & Housewares Show in March, the Hong Kong Housewares Show in April, the Montreal SIDIM in May and the Tokyo Shiodome Centre in July. In addition MACEF will be at the centre of the Lombardy Region’s presentation at the D & D Mall in Sao Paulo, Brazil for a whole month, from mid-October to mid-November, following promotional activities last summer at the Sao Paulo House & Gift Fair, an important show which is the event of reference for the home and gift sector for the whole of South America. Finally, MACEF’s international year closes in the second half of October in New Delhi, India and Bangkok, Thailand.
Promotion is also intense in Italy of course, through ever-stronger ties with those institutions charged with promoting local enterprises (such as the Chambers of Commerce) or with the associations which represent the visitors (Confcommercio). Excellent results also came in September from Progetto Sud, which offered travel packages and discounted costs to over 1,100 visitors from the regions of Southern Italy.
Still on the topic of communication, the show’s web site is proving a great attraction, both from the information point of view -www.macef.it has reached 1 million pages viewed – and as a business engine (10 thousand tickets sold on-line for the last Autumn MACEF). Even while the International Home Show represents and communicates “traditional” domestic values, it is technologically in the forefront with regard to dialogue with visitors (the creation of macefmobile and the downloadable catalog) and relations with exhibitors, for whom a dedicated website was created two years ago (www.mymacef.it) to provide companies with immediate solutions to all the possible technical problems which could arise before, during and after the show.
The heart of MACEF remains that of a great trade fair at which exhibitors collect direct or future orders and develop the business contacts made at the show. Alongside this, which remains its basic prerogative (and which differentiates MACE from other big Italian trade fairs which over time have become more than anything shop windows and “events”), MACEF is developing its own specific propensity for communication, inevitable in an era of globalization. And it is doing it, together with its exhibitors, by creating marketing initiatives aimed at improving and developing the relationship between exhibiting companies and distributors (retailers, specialist shops, large-scale distributors, wholesalers…)..
The events designed for MACEF January 2008 are all business oriented, from the successful “Costume Jewellery Oscars” launched at last September’s edition by the Ornamenta magazine and designed to highlight the creative verve of companies in the sector (which with around 25 thousand square metres represents one of MACEF’s biggest and most significant “souls”), to another edition of Floral Design, organized by Edizioni Leons, which proposes the return of flowers to the centre of the domestic scene and for use as highly attractive decorative elements for sales points. Another eagerly anticipated appointment at MACEF January will be the Martini Prize for design dedicated to young designers and organized by the specialist site, designboom. The theme this year is Eating in 2015 - at work, on the go & travel, at home and relates to cutlery, accessories and utensils for the table and the kitchen. Proof of the extent of the popularity of the competition – organized and managed exclusively on the web – is the growing number of designs which arrive at the competition office edition after edition. Designs sent in by young participants in the 2007 edition were more than 5 thousand! The closing date for entries for the MACEF January 2008 edition is 10 December 2007. The chosen entries will be presented in a dedicated area at the show. The jury will consist of a chef (Fulvio Pierangelini), two designers (Ettore Sottsass and Luca Trazzi) and Nello Martini as representative for MACEF.
Press Office
Simona Musazzi
+39 02 48550469
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Caterina Zambelli
+39 02 48550334
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Public relations consultant
Paolo Mastromo
+39 02 48550407
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Edelman
Paola Di Giuseppe
+39 02 63116.220
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Lea Iervoglini
+39 02 63116.266
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