The message was backed by posters bidding the Earls Court crowds a fond farewell.

The "Bigger and Better" theme has been run through the promotions campaign for the 2004 show: the first at ExCeL: the 50th London Boat show that now gets its "International" back in the title.

The most important London Boat Show for many years.

The promotions budget for this show reflects its importance. While an Earls Court show might have seen a spend of around £500,000, the 2004 ExCeL show will have more than £2 million spent on it: "a massive increase, " noted Gower.

The money is being spent on a wide spread of media:

television commercials, national and specialist press (UK and international), radio, outdoor advertising (posters and Tube cards) and the Internet.

The campaign is being funded by National Boat Shows (NBS), ExCeL and The Daily Telegraph .The 10 year contract with ExCeL includes financial marketing support for the first three years, a sum that amounts to £750,000. The Telegraph isinvesting £400,000 for the 2004 show - £200,000 into the main pot and an extra £200,000 to be spent on a dedicated boat show radio campaign.

Schroders sponsorship In addition to all this, Schroders will be leveraging its sponsorship of the show with mentions of its boat show support in the company's television, poster and national press advertising.

The LIBS campaign kicks off in November in the specialist boating press in the UK and abroad. "We 're getting into new areas and buying more titles, " promised Gower as he summarised the £100,000 European spend set aside for boating titles in France, Italy, Spain, Germany and The Netherlands.

The week commencing December 1 sees the start of the Internet campaign. "We 're using the high-traffic sites such as lastminute. com, thisislondon, timeout, virgin. net and the Times and Telegraph online sites, " said Gower.

The sites will have buttons, banners, links, pop-ups and skyscrapers, which are those irritating advertisements that slide up from the bottom of the screen.

The national press campaign starts week commencing December 8 with the campaign running in Metro , the Evening Standard, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday , The Observer , TheGuardian and Radio Times.

"The Radio Times costs £25,000 a page, " said Gower.

"But its Christmas issue gets a readership of 12,000,000."

Radio campaign The Daily Telegraph's radio campaign starts week commencing December 12 - this campaign is in addition to the DT's own advertisements in the 'paper.

The television campaign hits in week commencing December 12. "We 've bought a series of 30second spots that will run over a three-week period on London and Meridian, " said Gower.

"They'll be run through into the second week of the show."

Gower readily confesses the outdoor campaign is heavily weighted towards affluent male Londoners. Starting week commencing December 29, the entire London Underground system will carry the "Bigger and Better" theme on some 8,100 Tube cards. "Tube cards are traditionally used for entertainment campaigns, " said Gower, "and we'll have three panels in every single carriage on the system."

Another element of the outdoor campaign is Very Big Posters - the kind you see along main city routes, at airports and in train stations.

In ad man-speak, they are 48-sheet Ultra posters and they will be used to spread the boat show message in mainline terminals, using both lit sites and moving panels.

And there's more. Another line of attack uses the NBS database of 160,000 previous show visitors. The entire database will be subjected to direct mail, email and SMS text messages.

"And all this is backed by the public relations campaign being mounted by Fishburn Hedges, " said Gower, adding that the company's track record during the recent Southampton Boat show saw BBC broadcasts and national press mentions every day during the show.

Fishburn Hedges is plugging away at broadcast and print media, telling them about the 50th anniversary, the waterways feature, the pool and the windsurfing championships, the boats in the marina, the Tall Ships and the Royal Navy frigate in the dock. And anything else that will get us column inches or broadcast minutes.

NBS in-house team And what about the in-house team at Egham, you ask?

Gower, Rebecca Jackson and Hayley Cooper have been busy, it seems.

They have negotiated national ITV1 and ITV2 coverage with a 1-hour national programme on the first Sunday and Monday.

At the time of writing, Gower said they were finalising negotiations for two Saturday broadcasts of the windsurfing championships on Channel 4.

The advertising creative work has been done by Fresh Summerfield Wilmott Keen.

The basic message is "The Bigger and Better Boat Show - now at ExCeL. It's got everybody going!"

The visual treatment relies on sophisticated cartoons.

"Using cartoons is a way of appealing to everyone, " said Gower. "Using photographs of real people means you identify a very specific type of person, which means you can end up alienating people."

There are 11 different treatments so specific sectors can be targeted and all advertisements will carry what Gower says are "subliminal messages" for the DLR and the ExCeL stations to get across the ease of access to the show.

"All that's needed now is for the industry to do its bit, " said Gower. He said firms can include show references in mail and on websites. They can run their own advertisements and they can send out the freely-available Z-cards.

"Exhibitors and industry needs to take every opportunity to promote themselves, " he said.

This is the first time a London boat show has been given this kind of promotion.

NBS promised to get 200,000 people to ExCeL - and they seem to be making a very determined effort to spread the word.