Inside RX AmericasInside RX Americas
10 Takeaways from TSNN’s Trade Show Talk Podcast with RX Americas President Fernando Fischer
July 1, 2025
Innovation as process.
That's the core philosophy of RX Americas President Fernando Fischer in our exclusive Trade Show Talk podcast interview. Fischer reveals how his team systematically tests ideas, measures outcomes with precision, and scales successful innovations across multiple shows—all while developing monetization strategies based on quantifiable value.
In our latest episode, Fischer delivers a masterclass in exhibition strategy—from breaking free of industry-focused thinking to adopting Formula 1's playbook for monetizing fan experiences.
His candid assessment of trade show shortcomings and ambitious vision for RX's future offers a rare glimpse into the mind reshaping one of the industry's largest portfolios across the U.S., Mexico, and Brazil.
Here's our curated list of the 10 most revealing highlights from our conversation, shedding light on RX's strategic direction, innovation, and commitment to excellence.
Listen to the full interview here.
Guest Bio: Fernando Fischer has served as President of the Americas for RX since 2020, overseeing operations in the USA, Mexico, and Brazil while supporting RX and the exhibition industry through a period of significant transformation and growth. He was previously CEO of RX Brazil for three years and has also served as CEO of eight private and public companies across seven industries. He also held a CEO position at a non-governmental organization dedicated to funding underrepresented athletes for the 2016 Olympics in Brazil and has served on multiple boards in both Brazil and the U.S. Fischer holds an MBA from the University of Rochester and is also a Yale alumnus.
1. Beyond M&A: Control What You Can
What’s driving RX’s growth strategy? “What I try to do with the team here is to simplify the strategy,” said Fischer. “There are things that we control more, and things that we control less, like M&A. One is expanding margin. We have what we call high-margin revenue streams, and we have ownership for each one of them. That's a really important focus area for us for the next three years.”
The second growth pillar is improving volume and adding new. “It's new clients, new attendees, new segments, and new launches,” he said. “And the third piece is to sustain that and support it by improving the service level, which is very important for our industry. I don’t think we're talking enough about this— how to streamline the exhibit journey with us.”
2. The Last Mile Problem: The Challenge That No One’s Talking About
“ When I compare our industry with other industries, I don't think we are creating a streamlined, easy to use, sexy, engaging user interface for both the attendees and the exhibitors,” said Fischer, particularly when it comes to the last mile, which he considers the last eight to 10 weeks before the show and during the show. “How do we combine process, organization, structure, and technology to give exhibitors a much better engagement with our shows? How do we elevate their conditions to play so they can have a better game during the shows.”
3. What’s In Kitchen Doesn’t Matter: Why RX is Rethinking the Experience
“We should stop thinking about pieces and products and think about the journey,” Fischer said. How can RX make the journey easy for exhibitors and attendees? Remember: “Customers don't care what's in the kitchen. They just want to order and have the best possible experience in the dining room, and that's what we're trying to do,” he said.
4. Trust Before Transactions: Changing Exhibitor Expectations
When asked about changing exhibitor expectations, one of the recent shifts Fischer shared is the demand for quality conversations between exhibitors and RX’s sales teams. " They [exhibitors] want to trust that our sales teams understand their needs. The second point is they are demanding more tangible ROI metrics to make a better assessment of their performance at the show. And the third is they definitely expect better service from us.”
5. Prove It or Lose It: RX’s Evolving Exhibitor Dashboard
When asked about tangible ROI metrics for exhibitors, Fischer cited the exhibitor dashboard that RX created with ROI metrics a few years ago. “We will continue to improve—as it’s a never-ending story—what we call the executive dashboard, where we have all the metrics that are tied to the show performance—not only the customer metrics, but also the average performance of their peers in the show and the show itself.”
6. Effort, Not Results: The Counterintuitive Metric Redefining RX's Sales Approach
How is RX approaching quality sales conversations with exhibitors? “We need standardization for that, and we need tools to use and to measure the conversation. We're using Gong and basing it on AI. We need to standardize the conversation, the questions, and the training piece—the effort piece. Measuring results is easy. What matters is how you measure effort––the effort and the quality of effort that the sales team is putting in, [and] how much they're learning from the process so they can see the improvement. Because if we improve effort the results will come.”
7. Segment Agnostic: Why Fischer Believes Industry Focus Is the Wrong Strategy
When asked about which shows and sectors in the Americas portfolio are showing the strongest momentum in 2025, Fischer said, “It's less about a segment and more about having the right fundamentals in place. Whenever an event has the right fundamentals in place, it will deliver a much better return. It's less about segments than it is about being ready to sell, planning the event well, having a solid event, a better proposition, and a better plan for what we do after the event.”
8. The Apple Store Effect: How Curated New Product Showcases Are Changing the Game
While data plays a critical role in RX’s operational strategies, Fischer highlighted the balance between data and intuition. He advocated for a keen understanding of customer needs beyond what data can reveal, encouraging a nuanced approach to innovation that embraces both information and instinct. “ PGA is a perfect example of a success story,” he said. In the last few years, the RX team added a concert on the show and a more curated product showcase that looks like an Apple store, he said. “ The customers were not telling us anything. They were saying the show was great but now the profitability of the show is 50% higher. The NPS is record high. We had 30% more attendees.”
9. The No-Human-Touch Strategy: Fischer's Radical Vision for Attendee Experience
What’s the ideal customer journey in his mind? “ Talking about attendees, my dream is that they have a self-journey,” he said. “They can do everything by themselves without any help from us, and they fully understand what we're offering. And the offer is based on the behavior and the personality and the persona of each one of them in a unique way. That they feel like we understand them, but there's absolutely no human interaction.”
10. Formula 1's Playbook: What Exhibition Giants Are Borrowing from Racing
“When I think about sponsorships, we have to first acknowledge there are other industries that are doing a much better job than we are,” Fischer said. Where does he look outside the industry for inspiration? “ The best company right now in the world doing sponsorship is F1, honestly. The way they monetize attendees based on journey and behaviors and segments of attendees and fans is just astonishing.”
