Three Tips for Success at CES

05 Jan Three Tips for Success at CES

Each year in the first week of January, I make my trek to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).  CES is one of the world’s largest trade shows and is attended by more than 170,000 from 152 countries across the globe.  More than 3,600 companies will exhibit at the 2016 show which occupies 2.2 million square feet of exhibit space.  More than 46,000 senior executives will grace the show exhibits, and 83% of the world’s top retailers will be in attendance.

Suffice it to say, CES is an action-packed show that is an international spectacle and full of cutting-edge technology. It’s a veritable Circus Maximus for the digital age that dominates news reports, news broadcasts and blogs for nearly 6 months after the show.

So how do exhibitors emerge victorious and live to fight another day like the gladiators of old?

I’ve been attending the show since 1994 and humbly offer four observations below.

1.) Keep Your Message Short and Simple — The KISS (Keep It Short and Simple) axiom serves exhibitors well at CES. The most important thing is a simple and easy-to-understand positioning statement that everyone can say in a single breath. The statement needs to be written with the consumer in mind. It should describe the product: why it’s better than competitors, its primary benefit(s) to customers and where they can find it. The positioning statement needs to be written in layman’s terms that folks outside of geekdom can easily remember.

2.) Break the Rules – CES is replete with innovative new products, apps and services. Relatively fewer exhibitors attempt to innovate how they use the trade show itself.   For most it’s about looking global. It’s about unifying their disparate product lines into a cohesive business proposition. It’s about creating an exhibition environment that spotlights key product features and benefits to the most people in the shortest amount of time. For many of our customers who are not interested in spending hundreds of thousands of dollars exhibiting at the show, we arrange for them to participate in journalist preview events and schedule demo suites at nearby hotels. We’re able to focus the attention of the 1,500+ assorted journalists who attend CES on our customers’ innovative products, and in the process create tons of news coverage and blogs for less than $20,000.

3.) Awards, Awards, Awards – There’s a gaggle of new product awards which are issued at the show by the Consumer Electronics Association, print and broadcast mediums like CNET or Popular Mechanics, retailers and even bloggers. The trick is to identify the gaps in the competition categories that are easy to win because of lower entry counts. Awards drive media coverage and booth visits as many of our clients have discovered. Yes, I know all awards are not created equal; however, most CES attendees and journalists are looking for simple cues to help them identify what’s worth seeing or learning more about. These types of awards can help. Last, another thing that many companies forget is the importance of merchandising the awards after the show in press releases, on social media and at retail.

4.) Bring the Show to the Masses – Although CES is attended by enough people to fill an average college football stadium three times over, there still are lots of people who don’t attend. We often advise our clients to share the show with their employees, channel
partners, Wall Street, customers and other specifiers, and we assist them in doing so. The goal? Provide 30- or 60-second video-driven insights about the show that are of unique interest to each audience. Our tools? Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

For more information, visit: www.axiomcom.com or write me at mreiber@axiomcom.com.