The ‘Fish at CES 2010

The beginning of January marked my first trip to geek nirvana (not to mention Vegas), as I attended CES 2010 to help SpeakerBox client Cernium launch their newest consumer product: Archerfish Solo, the world’s first Thinking Camera. Being a CES virgin, I was completely blown away by the scale and the lengths that many companies go to just to drive booth traffic. Never mind the nearly naked models hawking Ed Hardy gadget accessories – Marvell, a semiconductor company, had Stan Lee at their booth…because nothing screams semiconductors like the father of Marvel comics, right?

At any rate, the show was successful from Cernium’s perspective: The overall response to Archerfish Solo was positive and came with a lot of media interest. Walt Mossberg and Katie Boehret from the Wall Street Journal even stopped by the booth for a demonstration from Cernium’s CEO, Craig Chambers!

Being that this was my initial experience with the technology wonderland that is CES, I have some thoughts for PR folks and their client companies looking to get through the noise that surrounds the event.

1. Press events are your friend. Seriously. Even though this pre-show activities cost extra (and some aren’t even produced by CES, like ShowStoppers), they are well worth the price from the exposure alone. Events like Unveiled and ShowStoppers are press-only, so you are ensuring that you’re getting your product in front of the media you care about. And they’re more intimate (Unveiled was about 50 companies this year), so the odds of a high-profile journalist stopping by for a chat are much greater than during CES itself.
   
   
2. Treat everyone who comes to your booth as important. I always stress this in every post I write, but it’s never more important than at CES. Often attendee badges, particularly for the media, don’t reflect who they actually work or write for. Someone registered as press for their own, low-profile blog might actually be a columnist for CNET, so give all visitors respect, no matter who they are.
    
3. Make time to see the floor. It’s important for both you and your client to get out to the show floor to see what other vendors (and competitors) are doing. Maybe it will give you ideas for next year or you might even run into some key press or industry contacts at an unrelated demo. At the very least it gives you some insight as to what the rest of your industry and your competitors are up to.

--John Terrill