How to make a conference booth video that actually stops people

I spent a few days at a big conference in Lisbon recently, looking at booth screens rather than booths.

Among the tech companies, about half had a screen. About half of those were looping a proper launch video, and a good number of them were genuinely good. The rest looped product screenshots, or a laptop mockup with the website scrolling inside it.

Every single screen was silent. The hall was far too loud for sound. And most of them struggled with the simplest test: could I tell what the company does within five seconds of looking?

The booths that pulled me in weren't the biggest or the most expensive. They just looked like someone had cared.

A booth video and a launch video for social media have the same job: show how seriously you take your company, to customers, to investors, and to the investors who already backed you.

What changes is the room. Some startups live on LinkedIn and X: founders post daily and a good video can travel far. Others put their energy into events. Neither is wrong, but a booth screen has rules a feed doesn't.

On social media, a voiceover carries most of the explaining, so the screen can stay clean. At a booth, the voiceover is gone.

Subtitles are not the answer. They're too small, and nobody stands close enough to read them. Instead, build the story so every key point is written on screen as part of the design, and let the images and actions explain themselves. If someone can follow it with the sound off, it works at a booth.

You can't choose which part of your video someone sees. You put a great hook in the first three seconds, and then someone walks up at 0:30.

So every part of the video has to hold attention on its own. What stopped me at the conference was simple: things moving smoothly, great colours, and a moment of story that made me curious. Keep that energy from the first second to the last, and people don't just glance. They stay for 30 seconds, then watch it again from the start.

The hook still matters. It can be a question, a bold claim, the problem shown in one image, a number, or a striking visual. The point is that it can't be the only good part.

Corti is a good example. Their film is told as short pixelated episodes, made with AI and kept in their brand style: a doctor and a patient, a hospital under pressure, then Corti stepping in. Every episode works on its own, which is exactly what a booth needs. In their words: "It ran the conference circuit, and held up for a public launch later."

Many teams treat the screen as decoration and plan to win people over by talking. The maths doesn't work: your team can only pitch to so many people in a day. The screen's job is to stop the right people long enough for that pitch to happen.

A weak screen next to a strong team still means fewer conversations.

• Length: 45-70 seconds. That's where the best results land.
• Sound: none needed. Every key point readable on screen.
• Text size: readable from a few metres away, not from a laptop.
• Looping: the end should flow back into the start. A hard cut back to the beginning looks broken.
• Structure: hook, the problem it solves, how it works, a strong ending.
• Cuts: if you also post on Instagram or Facebook, ask for a vertical version too.

Not every event video has to loop. If it plays once on a stage, it's a different brief. Decide where it will run before anything gets made.

Start 6-7 weeks before the event. Four weeks can work with a clear plan and a team that replies quickly. Three weeks means everything is rushed, and it shows.

On cost, it depends on who makes it. A freelancer can do a video for $2-3k, usually animating what you hand them. If you want a team behind it, with story, script, storyboard, music and sound design, expect roughly $5k to $40k. Most of our launch videos land between $8k and $15k.

Stacks premiered theirs at the Stacks Summit. If you have an event coming up, tell us the date and we'll plan backwards from it.