If you’re wandering around the halls of MACNA, then chances are you have seen the guys from Animal Planet’s ‘Tanked’. They’re usually pretty hard to miss, as they always have a crowd of folks lining up to meet them (don’t ask us why). Well, not only are Brett and Wayde here at MACNA, but they’re also filming an episode of the aquarium installation show. They set up an aquarium, worked their hocus pocus, and had a tank up and running in no time. Of course, all of the Animal Planet cronies are guarding things during the recording. Heck, they wouldn’t even let me slip the AquaNerd logo in anywhere.
We give them a hard time and probably go a little overboard with the jabs from time to time, but there is an unfortunate downside to having them here. For one, they are a big distraction to the other companies at the show. Companies who are there blowing a whole bunch of advertising money on booth space only to be overshadowed by the ‘Tanked’ guys. We’re not saying they shouldn’t be here. It’s a free country, they can do whatever they want. But it doesn’t help us from feeling bad for the companies that really rely on shows like this to help their businesses out. The only hopeful point behind this is the potential for fans to spill over into adjacent booths, but who knows what will happen.
One thing that does truly bother me is the flyers from Animal Planet that are discouraging (a nicer word for banning) people from taking photographs or getting in the way and whatnot. This is not MACNA presented by Animal Planet. This event is for bloggers like ourselves, aquarium hobbyists, and other vendors to meet and greet with like minded folks, take photos of aquarium equipment and livestock, and even buy some cool stuff.
All that said, I guess the big positive here is that MACNA might get more exposure, assuming Animal Planet’s legal department doesn’t decide to blur out all of the logos. I guess we’ll see, or maybe we won’t, we don’t watch that show.
