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Beyond Paper: Messaging at the Auto Show

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by Dan B.

Earlier this month, we visited the New York Auto Show to meet a few clients and gawk at the sea of shiny things, which is always fun for me as a car guy. I’ve been absent the past few years, and three things struck me about the 2012 show:

  1. LED screens are now priced low enough to be used copiously in a large trade setting. Several manufacturers (most notably Chrysler) created an immersive experience using big, slick panels of LED eye candy.
     
  2. The next generation NYC cab is gargantuan, and I hope it somehow gets scrapped at the 11th hour in favor of the Turkish design.
     
  3. There was not a piece of printed material in sight, which was disorienting. It used to be a badge of honor to return from the auto show with a stuffed bag of glossy brochures. This year, almost all formalized messaging was contained in touch screen kiosks, from demos to product specs to spirit videos. Score one for interactivity, two for the environment, and three for…indifference. I saw only a handful of attendees using the kiosks. This makes sense: paper can be flipped through, picked up, taken home and ogled democratically without constraint. An iPad fixed at chest height is tidy and slick, but it’s not an ideal experience. Only one person can engage at a time, and tolerance for delayed gratification is understandably low—if social media has taught us anything, it is that people don’t flock to uninspiring marketing just because it’s there.

It appears that event marketing is amidst a transition period. Paper is out (good in principle), but small touch displays don’t currently deliver a memorable engagement. Perhaps bigger will become better, with interaction realized collaboratively on a giant video screen. Or the answer might be micro, and unique apps for mobile consumption will be the tool of choice. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how event marketing evolves, and how advances in technology and communication tactics shape big events like the auto show. My vision? Let’s figure out how to virtually mimic the feeling of driving a Porsche…if we do that, I promise to never skip another year.

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