At any major tradeshow, there is likely to be a wide variety of different vendors and things to see. Among these may be lots of interesting demonstrations, but some will inevitably be more of a draw than others.
If your company has a big reveal that garners this sort of attention, then you've done a good job promoting yourself, but you'll need to do more, including instituting custom trade show displays.
Here's one high-profile trade show demonstration that might benefit from good marketing to back it up: Sony's futuristic "Project Morpheus" gaming headset. With immersive virtual reality a hot topic, this device is getting press attention, and will undoubtedly gain more from its appearance at the upcoming IFA trade show in Berlin this September.
As an article in CNet details, the unveiling of this device seems to be fairly anticipated, given the amount of hype surrounding another headset called Oculus Rift. Since this concept in particular relies on visual information, visual displays might be needed to communicate the point to interested trade show attendees.
A different piece on this same technology written for TIME magazine quotes the head of the division responsible for developing this system at Playstation, Richard Marks.
"We really focused a lot on technology in the past, and [now] we really want to focus more on the new experiences that technology enables," he said. "One of the things that we believe strongly in is actually prototyping things; we call it: experiencing engineering."
Anything that immersive and abstract may need specific images and visual symbols to win over curious attendees. Custom made signs can cut to the heart of the matter and make technical jargon easier to understand.