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
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.
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.