Stop me if you've heard this one: It's 2021, one of your most important trade shows cancelled just weeks before it was set to launch, and there's no digital backup. Sounds like the year in a nutshell, amirite?

I'm vice president of business development for AyrKing, which specializes in engineering products such as marinators and breaders that prepare proteins (mostly chicken) and vegetables for fryers and prevent food waste in fast-food mainstays such as Popeyes and KFC. The company carries just two major trade shows on its calendar – the yearly National Restaurant Association Show and the biennial North American Association of Food Equipment Manufacturers (NAFEM) Show – so missing just one opportunity for face-to-face demos is a really big deal.

The 2021 NAFEM expo, our first live event in more than 18 months, was set to kick off in the third week of August in Orlando, FL. We'd secured a 20-by-30-foot island along with a beautiful rigged banner that we were jazzed about since, up until then, we'd always used floor-mounted headers. And we'd prepped a pallet of branded chicken-shaped stress balls that work double duty at our trade shows. First, the faux poultry stand in for real food, as our live demos require lots of messy flour and breading. Second, they are great giveaways that attendees love. Besides, who couldn't have used a couple dozen stress balls last year?

Anticipation was high at the warehouse where everything was waiting to go out the door in a few days, and we were ready to crush it in Orlando. This was a chance for us to show off the commercial kitchen solutions we'd been developing over the past couple years, and NAFEM would give our team the chance to finally reconnect with old customers and form relationships with new prospects. After so much time off from live events, this felt like prepping for the Super Bowl.

Before we shipped the crates to the venue, we decided to brush off the flour – er, dust – by staging the exhibit inside our warehouse. This would also give us the opportunity to train a few new engineers who had never worked a trade show before. So we cleared some space, set up the bones of the exhibit, played with the placement of displays, and began training staffers. Our excitement only continued to grow.

And then bam! Just as we were set to repack the exhibit, we got word that NAFEM cancelled because of the massive spike in COVID cases caused by the Delta variant burning across the country. Although the show was right to pull the plug, our anticipation turned to shock, disbelief, and disappointment. It felt like someone had loosed a fox in a chicken coop. But we weren't ready to call it quits before we even got started. Sure, life may have served us a basket of rotten eggs, but we were determined to make some delicious fried chicken out of them somehow.

Our team wouldn't be able to meet clients face to face (major bummer), but maybe we could use the situation to create some positive online buzz and accomplish a few other tasks on our to-do list at the same time. We always try to grab some video of the products on site once we get our booth set up, but the hustle and bustle of install usually means we only manage to film a short clip or two. Now, however, all we had was time. And since we didn't have to repack the crates, we decided to use our exhibit to finally shoot enough video content for a whole Sundance film festival.

We called up our friends at Gumball Media out of Franklin, TN, and they agreed to send over a video crew for a day to shoot demos in our "exhibit," tape short interviews, and get as much B-roll footage as they could. And since our schedules were now relatively clear, we decided to turn the filming into a companywide event that would include lunch and the opportunity for everyone to pose for updated headshots – something we hadn't offered employees in a very long time.

When the day arrived, we had the exhibit decked out just like it would have been on the show floor (minus our rigged header, which would have to wait for a future event) with our stress-ball chickens all set to play their stand-in roles. Gumball Media spent the day shooting videos of engineers demoing our products to their fellow employees, who acted as attendees. I even jumped in front of the camera to put together some quick ad-like spots featuring the Flavornator – my lovable Terminator impression – for a dash of humor. All the while, our staff got to learn more about how our products operate, which would translate to better sales calls down the line.

By the end of the day, we'd collected way more video content than we would ever have been able to on a chaotic show floor. We even decided to leave the exhibit up in the warehouse as a showcase so when clients showed up, we could offer them a hands-on experience.

About the time NAFEM would have kicked off, we started sharing our videos on our social media channels. The professionally shot and edited content garnered loads of attention from our prospects because not many other exhibitors seemed to pivot like we had. Since then, we've continued uploading additional video assets promoting our products, which turned out to be a great resource to our sales and marketing teams.

Without a doubt, we'd rather have been on the show floor having the face-to-face interactions we all crave. But in the end, we salvaged what we could, and I consider that a major triumph under the circumstances. It goes to show that a bit of creativity can go a long way as long as you don't chicken out of trying something new.