Dive into the wild world of CES 2024 with host Eric Chemi and his Bospar colleagues as they unpack the tech conference’s most fascinating moments. From the AI explosion that dominated every booth to the surprising rise of content creators over traditional media, this episode offers an insider’s view of the whole event. Prepare for next year’s CES and discover how smaller companies can make a big splash and stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Stay updated with this episode’s guests & check out their behind-the-scenes CES content!
- Brent Shelton, VP of Media Relations
- Greg Allen, Account Supervisor
- Tsai-Ni Ku, Senior Account Executive
Click To Read Transcript
I’m Eric Chemi and this is Politely Pushy welcome to Politely Pushy as always I’m your host Eric Chemi today we’ve got a special episode we have three of my colleagues here from Bospar they’re fresh off of their trip to CES and we’re going to talk about what
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happened what were the crazy things they saw that they didn’t see that they were expecting to advice for next year mistakes that they might have made but maybe they won’t want to share those but this is a special episode because we’re really dig into what’s going on you know
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when you’re in the building when you’re in those meetings when you’re in the peripheral events what’s happening and how can companies best position themselves to get the most attention whether you’re a small company looking to fight the big guys or you’re one of
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the big guys yourself how do you get maximum attention for your investment and for your spend going to CES and making sure it’s it’s worthwhile so we’ve got we’ve got Greg down at the bottom we’ve got Brent we’ve got Tsai-Ni they’re all here you’re all there so
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thanks for joining me I’m going to start with with Brent to tell me what was most surprising for you this year at CES um surprising and not surprising but all the attention uh given to AI um which we kind of knew was going to happen but uh day one kickoff with the
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keynote uh CEO of Nvidia announces their uh supercomp their supercomputing uh device you know so it kind of hijacked everything because you know they’re they’re the uh big 800 pound gorilla in almost every room right now um and for us you know our our clients
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are aren’t in that realm most of them uh that were attending CES anyway aren’t in that realm of uh database a AI um so uh we we had to re rethink a little bit uh but after about 24 hours of that new cycle uh things things kind of went back to normal. Greg yeah let’s see what you
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got you’re nodding yeah I was that was that was one thing too and also one thing that I found surprising was the amount of content creators that was there um as opposed to media in terms of ratio I saw a lot of you know folks walking around with expensive DSLR
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cameras and stabilizers coming around taking video that sort of stuff um didn’t really see a lot of the traditional media there especially the first day because they were probably all there um with the Nvidia announcements covering all the other AI stories uh that sort of thing
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so it was a surprise to sort of see that gradual shift of every day we kind of saw more and more reporters traditional reporters as opposed to the first couple days where they were looking for the digital creators were looking for the glitz and the Glam but the traditional
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media was on the boots on the ground you know covering some of the most um important stories that were that were there so we saw them trickle in as the week went in yeah I would agree with that oh go ahead Tsai-Ni no I was just gonna say something that Brent said he
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said everything you know AI was a trending topping and it was almost as if you if you didn’t have AI you couldn’t show anything at CES I don’t think that was one booth that didn’t have an AI product there and it was just so surprising that you know AI is such a
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trendy topic that there’s nothing without AI and you know what even is the extent of AI with some of these products what exactly does AI mean in a world like today yeah I would uh I would say that although you know the cont uh Greg brought up a little bit more
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concentration of the content creators especially YouTubers um at at this conference which we’ve seen you know more recently but I I would agree even to the point where media were you know armed and ready with their little cameras and stuff um shooting a lot of b-roll where normally
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in the past you know they would come do their interviews but now they’re they’re probably working for their entire staff so they’re they’re pulling b-roll and help helping the content creators on their teams you know assemble all of those assets so they can uh do those
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stories online but as well you you know they’re serving their social teams um so that was that was kind of interesting our uh the the main client that Greg and I were representing was not an AI client at all it’s uh traditional audio um right in the and we were right
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in the middle right in the thick of all of the AI that was happening on the entertainment side we what our booth Greg was next to Panasonic Hisense uh TCL Samsung so here’s this little bitty company right right in the middle of all these companies that definitely had huge
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stake in um you know the trend of AI as well as um you know a lot of TVs and that type of thing which which was kind of the play for our client to make that big investment and get in get their product into the conversation with what is happening in the home
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theater Market um it was it was a good move it just however like Greg said it took about 24 hours for that news cycle to get over with before the media started dropping in and paying attention to what we were doing yeah and with the addition of all
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of the content creators that were there um our client did a really good job of having this booth that had attractions that would have people come to the booth so they had this massive art installation that was in the middle of the their booth and a lot of people
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would just stop by there were reporters that were getting their b-roll there they were getting they’re finishing their Recaps there they were doing a lot of different sort of um different ways of capturing videos and content just in that installation and they would have
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never known about who our client was before but then they stopped by and then they might ask a couple questions of like oh who you know who are you guys what do you guys do oh that’s super interesting I would like to learn more um so that was something that we we saw
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as well too with the the digital content creators and what was sort of um successful um on our end just based off of what was there aesthetically wise um yeah and I saw that in different Halls too like there were you know they were segmented the specific Hall where Greg
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and Brent were there are all the big names I think they named a few like Hisense TCL but there are other Halls where the booths were a little bit smaller and one booth I saw doing particularly well was Segway because had the actual um electric scooter where
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everyone could go around on a track everyone was filming so that did really well as anything that had you know our client ITRI that had an AI badminton trainer so a bunch of reporters and content creators stopped by to try and play badminton even if it was their
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first time and for me I had to play in my heels which as an FYI do not wear heels to CES even if you think you’ll feel good you won’t not wearing yes that’s funny go ahead Brent oh I was gonna say I missed the Segway thing that would have been pretty cool my earlier days uh in PR we had
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Segways in the office so it was kind of cool so did they make you sign an insurance waiver because I kind of well so I did think about doing that in my heels too but the insurance waiver looked a little too intense um so considering I wasn’t going to walk away with a few thousand if I
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had fallen I didn’t do it but the people who did do it you know they had different camera angles there was a huge line for it and even not you know we speaking about things that you can do but also just giveaways a bunch of people stood in line for free
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skateboards I mean I personally have never been to a conference where they’re giving away free skateboards but it was just crazy to see the different goodies you could get like there are um fedoras from Red Hat there are all these neon um bags that >> were they red, were the fedoras red? >>
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yeah okay I hope so yeah yeah no it was a it was cute they’re a good you know they’re well thought out and it’s surprising to see people stand in line for hours to get a free skateboard when we could probably order one from Amazon so there is something behind like how
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much pull you have with a giveaway I like what you said I think I think we see that every year it was probably the same the same uh company I was giving away skateboards last year because it was super popular they’re right in the thick of like the VR um and
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uh virtual reality uh yeah honestly I >> presentations >> I don’t even know what they do I just know there was a big sign that said free skateboard and I was like oh you know if I had more time I probably would have stood in line and tried to take a skateboard home with my
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one carry-on bag that I had on Delta but yeah you know it was interesting to see that CES is not just a Tech conference but they had Steve Aoki playing right you know I think it was I don’t remember which Booth it was but he was playing right next to where
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Brent and Greg were and it was just the whole thing is almost a festival there’s a lot of entertainment value for sure um and because there’s so much to take in it it’s almost necessary like even in the booth that Greg and I were representing Fasetto one of one of our
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clients they’re very niche uh they provide audio through power lines uh which is very interesting when you think about it instead of running speaker wires all over your house use those exist existing power lines to send your audio to your Source um and media found
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that incredibly interesting almost to the point where they didn’t believe it if Greg remembers we had some we had some deniers uh including from some from top tier uh but you know seeing and hearing is believing and that was kind of the cool draw that this very small
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company knew um they were prepared for it and they knew it was going to happen they even had this really cool like Lego display where there was all the different steps and you looked at this Lego house that was all set up and I personally found that display outside of
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all the different kind of uh real displays um that they had uh a great way to tell the story especially to media that were just trying to suck it all in and understand what the technology does um just running them through the little Lego display kind of
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told the story really quickly and then all of a sudden a light bulb would go on um then uh of course our big hurdle was uh we had some deniers there that just didn’t didn’t believe that it could happen without um uh ruining the quality of the audio so uh that that in essence
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you would think that’s a huge issue but it actually worked to our advantage because it kept those top tier folks in the booth uh wanting to learn more yeah I think if if you’re a company who’s teetering on whether I should exhibit at CES whether I should go I
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think Fasetto was a great proof point and example of why you should go especially if you have amazing technology if you believe in technology if you think um what you’re doing is very Innovative and will capture and resonate with the media um it’s definitely something that you
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should do um I know a lot of our our media interest and the responses we’ve been getting from reporters leading up to CES was there’s no way I don’t believe this the reporters that would come up and were intrigued by Booth as well too would come chat with
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us and say you know what what do you guys do and we would explain that story of sound over power lines and the the the main thing that they were saying was shut the heck up like there’s there’s no way this is true so we’ go around to the different demos show them the different
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products and then they become a believer all of a sudden then they want to start learning more about the product and they want to stay updated on you know some of the press releases and the news that you guys have so it’s a good way to develop relationships with the porters who were
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doubters because there’s only so much you can say in an email but once you actually go ahead and see it in person or hear it in person in Fasetto’s case then it’s totally a different ball game and you open yourself up to a wider range of reporters who you probably never would
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have heard of before because it’s just words on a screen rather than hearing it to believe it do you do you find that you need to go chase reporters down or it’s like if you stand there people will come to you it’s it’s more if you stand there people will come to you I know
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reporters are are really busy and they’re going from booth to booth because they’re on tight schedules as well too and I don’t want to just go up there and interrupt them but if they’re curiously looking around the booth then you know we’ll ask them you know how
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they’re doing if they have any questions if they want to learn more about the specific client but it’s nothing we really press on per se um because we want to respect the reporter’s time and we want to respect their attention and what they’re doing um but if they come
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with a curious look or if they come up to us we’ll definitely give them um this feel of you know what the company does and why this is important and you know why you should you listen to them yeah I agree I mean it’s that’s the tactic they they you know especially the veteran
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reporters that are there they they know when somebody’s trying to hunt them down um it can work um but it’s it’s a better tactic when they’re really close to your booth at least um if if they look inside the booth that’s that’s an open door and a reason to offer them you
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know to get them more information and and pull them in um it works really well I would say in like last year I was there representing a lot bigger company very well known uh so and they had 100 different computer peripherals so you’re almost as a just as a consumer you’re
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almost familiar with a lot of the things that were in the booth because you use them every day like a dock for your computer system or a backpack or something like that where in this case it was a little bit more difficult because it was such a niche product so
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that’s that’s why uh as I said earlier it was really important for this little guy in the in the giant consumer land uh to stand out with the things that they had in the booth um and it it was it was very uh well thought out um ahead of time at the same time we worked closely
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uh with the client and they they really wanted our opinion from our experience on what wasn’t working so we had little huddles um took some notes and then we’re planning in the next couple weeks to do a recap with them and decide how we can make it better in the coming year
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because they while we were there they they went ahead and signed on to do an even bigger booth next year how do you know who to avoid who’s a who’s a Time waster when I hear the story about people standing in line for skateboards I think these people I
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can’t waste my time with these people if you have that much time to stand in line for a free skateboard then you’re not you’re not important enough to probably be doing important work there so like how do you how do you like weed out the people who are you know they’re the
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leeches of the conference and focus your time on like people that are going to get your get your goals accomplished well it depends what your goals are like is your goal to get more media attention then obviously speak to reporters maybe at the conference is not the right time but
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everyone’s in Vegas at this time you know going to get dinner sitting at the bar you’ll probably have a report on either side of you you know is trying are you’re a business trying to find a partner trying to um you know expand your business to find the right investor
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so it really depends on who you’re trying to find there are a lot of people who go to these trade shows simply because they’re interested in technology and you know they might not be who I’m targeting at the time but it doesn’t mean that they’re not useful for someone
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else all these companies need an audience and they are the audience yeah I think it depends on your situation as well like for example the company that Greg and I were there to represent for most of our time there uh they they don’t even have a product
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that’s available to the public so it’s not even there yet that a matter of fact that was a huge question that we had to answer to especially the major media because they understand how much money it costs to have a booth right in right in the middle of this highly congested
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area with these big uh consumer Giants and we don’t even have a product to sell so um it was that actually worked in our favor it started it was a conversation starter but you know it like Tsai-Ni said it depends on what your goals are um a lot of times there’s a bunch of new
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products that are being released so you want to bring awareness to those uh you know immediately and that’s that’s why you’re there if you don’t have news and you’re at CES then you know that’s the time to give away skateboards uh so you pull people in your booth and you you
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can just talk about what’s going on and maybe what’s coming in the new year a lot of times uh these products aren’t aren’t ready for prime time when CES happens and they might be happening later in the year so a lot of times you’ll see stunts like that or we saw a lot of
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celebrities football players uh basketball players Hisense had the NBA trophy and the FIFA trophy um across the way TCL had the Lombardi trophy so those are big draws um and it’s not to say those two big companies didn’t have things going on because they did uh but
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you know you want to keep people in your booth somehow um so a lot of times having that extra draw is is the key because when your booth is super busy you don’t you don’t have enough people to talk to all the media all at once so you want to occupy them until you have
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time toh get your message out >> sorry go ahead >> yeah and then just like one thing to add from there to uh the different people have different badges in terms of media and who’s attending who’s an industry person who’s an analyst and they’re all different
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colorcoded so um if you’re going back to your question a little bit you can easily kind of tell you know who’s the media person that’s walking in who’s an industry person um who’s just an an attendee and then that way you can kind of prioritize your time a little bit of
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who you want to talk to when they come over to the booth or if there’s people that you want to hand off to someone who might be you know a decision maker because they’re looking to do collaborations or they want to do a little bit of investor meetings or
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something like that they have all those different kinds of people that will stop by the booth and so that way you can kind of hand them off to those different people that could answer those specific questions but if there’s reporters um you know Brent and I would want to you
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know have those conversations initially and then set them up if they want to learn a little bit more with other people that are there too so then there’s that the the color coding of sort of who’s there in the badges that can kind of tell us you know who we kind
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of need to talk to in the moment yeah something great to think about as an attendee you know I was there on behalf of Bospar just understanding the new trend and Tech and understanding what’s coming what’s up and coming CES is so large it is huge and you only have a few days to go through
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all the Halls so something that is great is that you know all the most reporters are at CES writing about the big companies writing about the big names so I prioritize my time at looked at little smaller boots smaller companies because they don’t usually get as much media
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attention and really understanding the new trends and stuff from these smaller booths and then going you know I glimmed I went I did go to the big booths they’re shiny and they’re big so I was going to stop by and I did do a quick glaze I was like oh this is cool but I
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read I mainly read all the news back in my hotel room from Tech crunch from Forbes from wherever it was and then I got to learn more about the industry from the smaller booths where they had people who could speak to me who they could tell me about their technology tell me they’re
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working on too and that’s how I kept informed as an attendee and hopefully I’ll be able to use this with my work at Bospar. You know you you mentioned Greg who should go or not go you hinted at that earlier I’m curious from all of you who do you think should not go like what
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kind of company would you say don’t go to CES it’s not worth the investment you’ll just get gobbled up by by everything else going on so it’s funny that you as that question because I was just thinking about what kind of PR person doesn’t need to go um we got one
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of our clients they’re called ITRI um and they do have an element of AI in their business um but our our team actually handled ITRI being at the at the conference remotely uh they were they were still able to get coverage in I’m reading the list here it’s amazing Fast
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Company, Fox News, Reuters, TechRadar, Digital Trends, NASDAQ, CNET, Tom’s guide without having boots on the ground so it it I think it really depends on your situation like for our situation um and if the company and not to answer your question but more on from
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the PR aspect of it uh we we needed to be there they need the company needed us to be there in ITRI situation um they didn’t our our team were able to handle it remotely um and do do a good job and still bring that brand awareness and media attention uh as far as the
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companies that should go and shouldn’t go um it really depends on I think the trends like if you’re really trending um you have the funding to do it but you’re fairly small um Fasetto is a really good example of why you spend that money and you go um they’re
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about ready to kick off and go live with something that is totally different and unique to a huge industry um and they wanted to show that off and they they spent the money and made the investment to do it um I would say where that money probably isn’t isn’t well spent is when
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AI is this huge thing going on and you and you have this little facet of AI in the industry um you’re going to get buried and you might be better off uh not not going into the event and choose a smaller event where you can stand out yeah and just to add to that to if
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you’re it also kind of depends what you’re looking for too if you’re going there to maybe make some deals talk to some investors um meet with some other key decision makers that could be a good place to do some collaboration um and Partnerships but if as a company you
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might not be ready for that yet or you’re a little bit farther away from going to Market or as said if you feel like you’re going to get drowned out a little bit um with some of the news that you have it might not be the best so um there’s always different reasons to
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go or to not go but it’s just depending on you know what the company’s current goals are for the following year or what their future road map is for their company as well too. >> What do you think about advice for next year what did you guys all learn you think okay if AI is taking over the
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world and and the current direction of the conference and what you’re seeing and what’s going on what’s your advice for different you know whether you’re professional in this industry or one of the technology companies here what do you what do you look for for next year? >>
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Yeah if I was on the PR side what I would if for next year I would advise all of our clients to try to have their priority meetings as early in the morning as possible because around 11 to 12 that’s when the big companies are going to make their announcements that’s
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when all the big reporters are going to be away they’re going to be at different Booth maybe they’re at you’re you’re at Central Hall then they’re at the Venetian Expo 10 minutes away um that ends up turning into 30 minutes with the traffic sometimes um and then that ends
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up becoming a domino effect so you have a meeting at two with a reporter there’s a good chance they might not stop by until like four you know they might go on their way to your booth they might see something that intrigues them because the reporters are naturally
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curious so that ends up getting in the way so we’ve seen that a lot of the early morning meetings that we’ve had sort of stuck um in terms of scheduling but as we got later in the day there seemed to have been more I’m gonna be late or no shows or didn’t have time to
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come at all and they could get washed in the little in the um in just of the massiveness of CES so would definitely encourage them to um or on the you the PR side to try to schedule those top tier and those folks you really think are going to make um the biggest impact
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in the morning and then in terms of what the company should do are they awake in the morning though it’s funny a lot of you surprised he people say don’t do the morning because like they’re not awake but but it’s interesting your data shows or your anecdotes or your experience
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your only hope of getting them is first thing if it’s not first thing it may not happen at all even before the show opens the on the Tuesday um CES technically opened at 10, but we had an interview with a top tier reporter scheduled at 9 and he was a able to show up and he was
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like yeah have my keynote in a couple of hours and then I was doing all this and we also just you know were able to send him things afterwards and wer able to you know necessarily um hear back some sometimes so then that way we already kind of knew he was caught up in the
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wash and we also had some Brett and I had some top tier reporters that were scheduled to come later in the day like 4 o’clock 3 o’clock and they ended up not being able to make it as well too but the ones we had in the morning were always were always there um so some even
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though it’s Vegas and that City is another city that never sleeps um reporters were up right early and so were we >> yeah I think the other thing that you want to do especially if you’re kind of a medium sized fish in in a big pond is you you try to like Greg said get
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prepared get ahead try to do pre-briefing before the conference ever starts um so at least you get that that part out of the way you’re part of their news cycle um there’s still going to include you even even if they haven’t physically seen you they might still
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include you at in their best of show report if they like what your product is and then usually if they really like what your product is and you’ve done that pre-briefing they’re still going to stop by the booth um so you can um really nurture that relationship because
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because they like you and they like what they heard in the pre-brief um if you’re so that’s really the key is to get get ahead of the actual show itself um it’ll also give you a pretty good indication of what your show’s going to be like um because you’ve already created that in
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that interest um so you know you know it might give you an opportunity to kind of change your messaging right before the show or get a couple of releases out if uh what you what you’ve done ahead of the show isn’t isn’t quite hitting and no more high heels right no more high
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heels um but I think Greg and Brent wrapped it up pretty well definitely make sure you’re scheduling your briefings ahead of CES you know maybe even a month before CES just because the reporters we did speak to they had a schedule already they were going from
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Booth to Booth to Booth they had maybe five minutes in between and there was very much to run between the briefings so as a PR person definitely stop prepping early get all your news out early and then just enjoy your briefings when you’re there awesome awesome well
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thank you everybody thanks for for uh holding the flag there what got planning the flag so something like that um for for doing that and and coming back and sharing your notes and and good luck and maybe you’ll be there next year thank you it’s always fun to be uh
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one of 140,000 people all in one place >> yeah like a lot of personal attention exactly there you go. Thank you to my guest and thanks for listening subscribe to get the latest episodes each week and we’ll see you next time.