- Picture thanks to Mike Duggan
Originally posted on MEGOagain.com
This year I had the incredible opportunity to attend CES (Consumer Electronic Show) in Las Vegas. This show attracts the biggest brands in tech and the people that love them. The word is that 140,000 people hit Vegas this year for CES! I think at any given time we had half of these people in our booth!
So what did I learn from attending #CES?
1) 5 Nights in Vegas is way to long
Late nights, bottle service, hard concrete show floors and your family in a different time zone. Enough said.
2) Expect the unexpected, and do the unexpected
Brands competing for attention at this large show pulled out all the stops with Celebs (our BlackBerry booth had Adrian Grenier, Olivia Wilde, Piers Morgan and Common) and fake Celebs (there was a fake Lady Gaga roaming the show, although the real one was also in attendance).
From David Berkowitz on Flickr
The most “unexpected” campaign was the attendance of the Hershey’s team promoting Reese’s Peanut Buttercups. A candy company at CES? They launched new Reese Mini’s at the show, including a press release and press conference “Reese’s Next Big Little Thing” hosted by tech guy Chris Pirillo. While I heard some muttering about why Reese’s was at a consumer electronics show, I think it was a clever PR play and judging from a quick review of a Google Search it worked. Of course I am a huge fan-girl for chocolate and peanut butter.
3) Technology is awesome
I work in tech, but my love of technology has always tended to lie in the ability to connect over social media rather than ooohing and ahing over gadgets, gizmos and shiny metal and buttons. After I walk around the show, I now have a much better idea as to why friends are obsessed with flat screen TVs and booming speakers and high tech appliances. Due to CES my appreciation for what goes into the creation of the products, and the incredible innovation that exists is today is 1000 x what it was pre- CES. I saw a mind blowing wall of televisions thinner than mobile phones; listened to headphones that made me feel like I was in the movie, and even high-tech vacuums that make me want to clean. This, along with the incredible integration and collaboration between brands makes me simply excited about what is to come!
4) Taking Online – Offline can be a huge success!
Our team from @BlackBerryHelp was onsite to do some live tweeting and offer tips, tricks and support to people who visited at the booth. Our @BlackBerry team was also running contests and live tweeting about events at the booth. These efforts proved successful in building awareness and engaging our community. And, even share of voice it appears on social networking sites.
Kodak also had a Blog Zone at their booth run by Thomas Hoehn and Chief Blogger Jennifer Cisney. The team was live tweeting, blogging as well as hosting talks on technology and social media.
I met a number of other social media types from brands at the show – who were tweeting to keep their followers looped in to the buzz at CES. I am sure next year we will see even more engagement from brands on the social channels around CES.
5) I want to go again!
Tweeting, Foursquare check-ins and blogs from CES…what will 2012 bring?
