BY CHRISTOPHER CAEN
Theory Associates
www.theoryassociates.com
So now that the chaos that is CES is over, have you had time to actually process the millions of press announcements, product releases and articles from every publication on the planet? OK, so probably not, but we thought we would do something different this week. You have heard enough about autonomous cars, drones, and 4K televisions. What we thought we would do today is a give you a flavor for what it feels like in Las Vegas during the week of CES. So come with us on one more walk of the show floor.
This is a line. There are a lot of these at CES. They don’t tell you that before, but when you try and jam 170,000 people into Las Vegas at the same time, this happens…a lot. And you would think that with 2.2 million square feet of convention space this year they could house them all. What they also don’t tell you is this year they scattered us all around town, from the Convention Center to the Sands Expo, the Bellagio, The Venetian, and all the way down to the Aria. Did I bring up the cab lines? Probably better that I don’t.
Of course you know by now that robots were big this year. Nobody knows exactly what they are going to be big doing, but there were a lot of ideas roaming the floor, most of them exploring the basic problem of our interaction with these contraptions…in other words…what do we look at? This is one attempt to solve this problem…here is another one:
Of course virtual reality and headsets were very big, and to listen to some you would think we are only a hear beat away from The Matrix movies. However, let’s be honest, the coolest thing in the movies was that whole 360 degree panning in one shot routine, right? So Nikon went and built that on the floor of CES with this ring of Nikon cameras all firing at the same time. So now even you can do your Neo thing for the world to see.
Vinyl. Oh my lordy, vinyl was back. Blue is an electronics manufacturer that makes some of the coolest microphones around. This year they launched a new line of headphones that are just as cool. And they had a DJ spinning honest to God records in their booth
Not to be outdone, Crosley, who pretty much own the franchise rights to retro vinyl, had their booth centered around a gigantic bookcase that was filled with….yep, you guessed it, vinyl.
Below you will see what we call in the trade “a shipper.” This is a display that is shipped as a big old box, it arrives at the retailer’s floor, you tear part of it open, prop it on end and you have a display. Shippers are the ugly ducklings of the retail floor, which is why we had to give big props to Kensington for this one. It’s a shipper that opens up to look like a school locker, the better to sell their line of products targeted at the school market…ok, that’s pretty clever.
We are not a big fan of “booth babes.” They are your first engagement with a customer and yet they know nothing about your product. It’s not a good start for connecting someone up with your brand. However, Xi3 obviously took the time to train them as well as a normal employee, and the results where in their booth. They had a pretty blonde showing off one of their gaming systems. Some guy jokingly asks her to play the combat game it was running. She then proceeds to obliterate him in a manner of seconds. Even better, a few moments later, a tech writer asks another one what the components are inside their system, obviously expecting to stump her. Not only does she answer it, she does it while field stripping the system into the separate components. Touche.
And finally, not trip through the halls of CES would be complete without finding that one booth that stops you in your tracks and makes you mutter to yourself…now why are they here? And this year’s winner…the USPS??
There you go…you have now done CES like a pro…see you same time next year!
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