By Robert Simpson

If the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London is considered the first "EXPO", then it can be safely said that all EXPOs have had a corporate presence because ever since that first splendid example corporate money has been needed to both finance the exhibitions and to provide interesting content for them.

In the 19th Century the great expositions were based on huge exhibition buildings which were internally themed around different aspects of the arts, manufactures and foreign countries. Only by the turn of the 20th Century did the idea of separate "pavilions" for foreign countries take hold, while what we would today call "corporate" activity still remained as contributions to themed exhibitions.

One exception was in France where, for example, at the 1900 Paris Exposition, some of the leading department stores had separate pavilions which proved very popular as they allowed more coherent displays, rather than the strictly classified displays of the main exposition where only articles of one particular kind could be shown together.

It is probably true to say that the real arrival of what we now recognize as the "corporate pavilion" was at the Chicago World's Fair of 1933-4. Possibly one of the reasons for this was that the organizers had trouble attracting foreign participation; but also by the 1930s many of the USA companies that are now known world wide demanded their own presence. Thus General Motors and Chrysler were not content to be in a common "Automobile" pavilion, but wanted pavilions of their own.

Recently the most notable presence of corporate pavilions has been in Japan. While European EXPOs like EXPO 92, Seville, and EXPO 2000, Hanover, had relatively few separate corporate pavilions, all EXPOs in Japan since EXPO 70 in Osaka have had very strong corporate participation with the major Japanese conglomerates vying with each other to have the most impressive pavilion.

One of the other areas of competition between the Japanese corporate pavilions seems to be that of seeing who can develop the longest waiting line. Waits of 3–5 hours have been common, meaning that visitors only attending the EXPO for one day are unlikely to see more than one corporate pavilion. Closer examination reveals a strange fact. Although an EXPO like EXPO 2005 has many millions of visitors, the handling capacity of some of the corporate pavilions is actually surprisingly small -- especially in relation to the apparently huge size of the pavilion itself. I estimated the capacity of one of the big corporate pavilions at EXPO 2005 (with 3-4 hour wait) as no more than 10,000 people per day, say 1.8 million over six months, compared to the total visitors to the site of around 20 million. While 1.8 million visitors would be a respectable total for a small foreign national pavilion, one would have expected that a large corporate exhibitor would be looking for more.

There is no doubt that corporate pavilions have been beneficial to EXPOs, especially in providing good entertainment for EXPO visitors, and in showcasing both new technologies and new show techniques. Obvious examples of the latter are the Fuji Pavilion at EXPO 70, Osaka, which presented the first showing of the IMAX projection system, and the NEC Pavilion at EXPO 85, Tsukuba, which had a 27 screen interactive videowall using back projection.

The NEC show took the audience on a space journey, and the audience as a whole could make choices as to which direction to go, using touchscreens sited at each seat. While the idea of audience interaction with a show was not new, the use of so many video projectors, driven by the then new laser disc, was certainly innovative and proved very popular with the audience.

As for entertainment one EXPO stands out in particular. This was EXPO 86, held in Vancouver, Canada, where the two most popular pavilions were those of Canadian Pacific and General Motors–and the reason they were so popular is that they both had hugely entertaining shows which captured the imagination of the public. Interestingly, both shows were produced by the same person, Bob Rogers.

General Motors, as might be expected, had a pavilion that showed futuristic car concepts and strongly promoted the brand–but what everyone wanted to see was their show "Spirit Lodge". This was set in a traditional American Indian Big House with a live Storyteller. It included brilliant stagecraft and magic effects, but underneath carried a serious message. In Bob Rogers’words; "what GM chose to do at EXPO 86 was to present the lowest tech show at EXPO. The Story teller challenges the validity of high technology -- is it making our lives better? Or worse? I think that in the storyline GM really wanted to say to the world that technology must be in the service of humanity. Ultimately technology must make us more human, to help us realize our human dreams."

While Bob Rogers modestly mentioned the show was "low tech" (which, technically speaking, it was) it is amusing to report that most of the public seeing the show thought that they had seen the latest in holographic projection.

The Canadian Pacific Pavilion had three shows, and a very good system of audience management to ensure a high visitor throughput. Most popular was a film called "Rainbow War" which went on to receive an Academy Award nomination. The film was very funny, but carried a serious message, once again Bob Rogers; "by choosing to present Rainbow War Canadian Pacific are sort of offering an olive branch. They're saying, 'look, we know how to get around now, we know how to transport each other. If we are all going to survive and prosper together we'd better figure out how to get along with each other.'"

EXPO 90, the International Garden and Greenery Exposition in Osaka, abbreviated in Japanese to Hana-haku, or "Flower Expo", had two pavilions that presented an interesting contrast, once again showing that sometimes "less is more". The Electricity pavilion had a high tech ride which, while enjoyable, only lasted a few minutes and gave a rather obscure message. Typical waiting time was 90 minutes. On the other hand the Gas Pavilion gave visitors really good value with a highly entertaining 45 minute show with a waiting time of about the same duration.

Every ten minutes a group of 200 entered the pavilion (this gave a respectable capacity of 15,000 per day) and were introduced to "Cinelabyrinth". The show was written and produced by team SCARS from Prague in what was then Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic, for the Dentsu Agency which was responsible for the pavilion. It drew directly on the ideas first shown by the Czechs in EXPO 67, but using a new fantasy story and new technology.

In the first auditorium, or more correctly "show space", the audience saw the first part of a story, which then offered a choice of how the story should develop -- so the audience then split into two and proceeded to different spaces where the story continued in two different ways. Each "show space" was elaborately decorated to match the story, and the whole process was repeated so that visitors went through four such spaces -- eventually all ending up in the same space for a grand finale. The show was one that appealed to all ages, and was very much based on a "green" theme of the kind that is becoming more urgent today.

As already mentioned, the corporate presence at EXPO 92, Seville was limited. The Telecommunications Pavilion, nominally put on by all of Europe's telecom companies, but actually realized by Telefonica of Spain had a "Global Village" theme, with the world's largest videowall using 850 monitors (at some points in the show each one was a pixel in a world map). Siemens, whose pavilion later was incorporated in a local science park, had an excellent show on the "Evolution of Networks", which was both entertaining and thought provoking. It used a rotating auditorium and multiple slide projection.

EXPO 93 in Taejon, Korea, followed the Japanese model with a very strong corporate presence. This was at a time when big "simulator shows" were in vogue, based on flight simulator technology and large motion bases. The Samsung Pavilion featured a 20m diameter dome in which two giant 60-person motion bases were installed. The "StarQuest" show was justly popular as the show was both thrilling and of high quality. Kia Motors had a different arrangement with six "small" simulators each seating 18 people at a time. Both these pavilions used 70mm film as the main visual medium, but it could already be seen that film as an EXPO medium would in due course be displaced by electronic image projection.

Which brings us back to EXPO 2005, in Aichi Prefecture in Japan. Here show concepts like that of the Mitsubishi Pavilion, based on the interesting idea of speculating what the Earth would be like if there was no Moon, would in previous years have been presented by 70mm film, but by 2005 it was possible to use all-electronic projection.

The strong corporate presence at EXPO 2005 included an entertaining robot show from Toyota, a ride show devoted to endangered species from Hitachi, and a space adventure show from Mitsui-Toshiba. The latter two both made interesting use of real time electronic image generation, continuing the "tradition" that corporate pavilions exploit the latest technology.