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BDTA Dental Showcase 2008 - truly a Recipe for Success

The BDTA's Recipe for Success certainly seems to have worked for this year’s record breaking Dental Showcase.  More visitors than ever before made the trip to ExCeL in London’s rapidly developing Docklands to visit the UK’s biggest dental exhibition.  In spite of re-development work on-site and even the closing of the DLR rail system on Saturday, more than 13,000 visitors flocked to see 327 exhibitors during the 3-day event.  There was so much to see that over a thousand visitors came back for a second and even a third day.

* Total does not include visitors who returned on more than one day.

Tony Reed, Executive Director of the BDTA, commented, “There is no doubt that Dental Showcase goes from strength to strength. With the help of BDTA members, Council, Committees and exhibitors the event grows in terms of visitor and exhibitor numbers year on year. We use visitor numbers as a measure of the success of the event and this year’s record breaking number of visitors suggests we are doing something right.  We aim to balance the opportunities for education, networking, researching, purchasing and fun to make the event a completely enjoyable experience.  Showcase has evolved into an event in the dental calendar which the whole industry wants to be part of and this is extremely encouraging.”

New dimensions were added to the exhibition this year to provide visitors with a greater range of activities, education and variety in their trip.  Seminars covering the core CPD subjects recommended by the GDC were introduced to the programme.  Over 2,000 visitors attended the daily seminars, presented by Life Start, Schulke UK and Kodak Dental Systems.

Exciting food related initiatives linking to the mouth-watering ‘Recipe for Success’ marketing theme were also part of the experience. Visitors were able to enjoy tasters of delicious ‘dental’ milkshakes made exclusively for Showcase 2008 on the feature area in the centre of the exhibition hall. Milk, fresh fruit and other surprise ingredients were used to create special milkshakes in a range of tempting flavours including:

• A taste of the NHS – Natural Honey Special
• A chance for DCPs to celebrate – Delicious Creamy Paradise
• The opportunity to stock up on CPD – Cool Pineapple Delight
• Some UDAs – Utterly Divine Apricot Surprise

Liz McClarnon a member of well-known band Atomic Kitten, and more recently, popular winner of the BBC’s Celebrity MasterChef competition, appeared on the feautre area on Saturday attracting a significant amount of visitor and dental press attention. She loved the Showcase milkshakes and took a lively interest in many of the dental products presented by exhibitors as she walked around the exhibition hall. 

The ‘find Mooley the Cow’ competition was launched at the event to link with the Showcase milkshake initiative and to encourage visitors to look at all the exhibition stands.  There was also a number of surprise appearances from a much larger but just as cute cow during the exhibition bringing back memories of the Showcase Magic Rabbit
which appeared at BDTA Dental Showcase 2007.

Simon Gambold, President of the BDTA, commented, “I am delighted with the success of this year’s Dental Showcase which has exceeded our expectations in terms of both exhibitor and visitor numbers.  The exhibition provides visitors with a valuable hands-on approach to learning about dental products and all the support services needed to set up and run a dental practice.  The popularity of the daily seminars further highlighted the hunger for CPD amongst dentists and DCPs at the moment.  I would like to thank everyone for making the event a success and look forward to welcoming you all to Dental Showcase 2009.”

BDTA Dental Showcase 2009 returns to the NEC Birmingham, 12 – 14 November 2009.  For further information visit www.dentalshowcase.com.

 

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