Marketing advice for CES booth staffs

In the past 9 years I’ve had the privilege to attend CES from so many different vantage points, including working in “traditional” CE booths as well as organizing the booth for tiny startups.  I’ve also attended as a consultant and as press.There’s a lot of tips out there for attending CES (my CES tips at LIVEdigitally, Forbes, SAI’s, etc), but I haven’t come across any good advice for the folks in charge of staffing the booths.  Here are my suggestions:

• Know your audience.   Look for name tags before you get into an in-depth discussion (if someone’s got theirs flipped around, just politely ask them who they are, it might feel awkward, but it’s important).  I watched a junior booth staffer spend 20 minutes with a fairly recognizable, high profile individual, without knowing who he was.  This is a colossal mistake, as it’s vitally important to get the right people talking to the right visitors.  Which brings me to…
• Funnel your traffic.  You should have a game plan for “who talks to who”.  If it’s a member of the press, someone from marketing should get them.  If it’s a senior exec from a big tech firm, someone from your BD/exec management team.  Different audiences get different discussions, and it’s as much a favor to them as it is to you to get them talking to the right folks.
• Wear comfy shoes and carry Purel.  Borrowing from my end-user post, booth duty is gruesome.  You’re standing most of the day, and odds aren’t bad your booth organizer cheaped out on the carpet so you are about 2mm off the concrete floor.  Additionally, you are going to shake several hundred hands per day. Yuck. Purel, and definitely be sure to wash prior to eating!
• Have bottled water handy.  I’ve lost my voice almost every year I did booth duty. Nuff said.
• Emphasize the team spirit. I don’t care what your title is, if someone who is on a 4 hour shift needs a soda or a hot dog or a piece of chewing gum, help them out. When I was at Sling Media, the first year we did a booth I distinctly remember one moment where the VP of Engineering did a coffee run for everyone.  That’s the right spirit.
• Don’t mistreat competition. With the power of blogs and live video streaming today, it’s silly to assume your entire demo WON’T end up online somewhere.  And if that occurs, your competition WILL see it.  So if they walk up to you, camera in hand, just do your normal demo and spiel. You certainly don’t have to give up company secrets, but you really should treat them like any other demo.  Personally, I take it a step further and make the effort to actually meet the person in question, commiserate on the show, etc.
• Ignore nobody. When doing demos I make a huge effort to make sure everyone around me is getting my attention.  Even if the demo you are doing is to some uber-important industry exec, that doesn’t mean you completely ignore the rest.  You can certainly say “hey everyone, I have a schedule demo to do right now, but I’ll be done in 15 minutes if you want to come back then” or something similar.  Also, even if the person looks like a kook (which they probably are), you still have a job to do.  Complain/joke about them later.
• Adapt your script. This year I’ll be doing demos with Bug Labs, and if I get a layman versus a Java programmer, I need to have two different stories to tell.  But not only that, my Wed/Thurs storytelling will differ from Mon/Tues, as I’ll be paying attention to what works and what doesn’t.  I recommend having group meetings at the end of either the first or second day to make changes to your scripts and pitches as necessary.
• Engage in discussions. Unless you are demoing iPhone 2.0, odds are pretty good you won’t have a line of a hundred people waiting to talk with you.  So take some time with the people around you, ask what they think.  More importantly: pay attention!  If three people in a row say the same thing or ask the same question, that should be something you note for your script.  If ten people in a row don’t understand your product, you have a bad pitch, and should fix it on the spot!
• Give useful schwag. The best schwag is stuff people keep and reuse.  The worst schwag is gimmicky stuff that gets played with once then goes to the landfill (mini-frisbees, light-up bouncy balls, etc).  My personal favorite is a deck of playing cards, but I also like pens, notepads, and mints.  Creative stuff is good, but again, if its future landfill supply, then consider skipping on it.
• Take and give business cards. This ritual will hopefully die off in the next few years, but in the meantime, play ball.  I recommend (but cannot say I perfectly practice what I preach here) followup with 100% of the cards you received, even if its nothing but being polite.
• Be on time. If your entire role with the show was being flown in, 6 hours a day of demos, then going back to the office, then you have no clue as to how much work went into organizing it by your colleagues.  Show up when and where you are supposed to, and be on time.  Vegas is about as big a distraction as one can imagine, but that’s a terrible excuse for disrespecting other people’s hard work.

Have a great show everyone!

2007 Marketing Moment: Radiohead’s “In Rainbows”

While this blog typically focuses on the marketing of consumer technology, I couldn’t pass up the chance to review what I found one of the most viral and successful marketing campaigns of the year. It applies, in general, to what we do here at Stage Two, as it deals digital downloading, and the concepts set forth could most certainly be adopted by consumer electronic companies.

Unless you were living under a rock for the better part of this year, you would have most certainly heard about British rock band Radiohead’s announcement that they would offer their new album, “In Rainbows” to fans via a ground shattering new business model: Pay What You Want. Fans could download the album for whatever price they deemed worthy, even if that price were FREE.

Radiohead (and their management, more so) harnessed the power of a perfect storm. Consumers have long been suffering the fallout of a death match between an ailing RIAA and the 800 lb. guerilla that is the internet, and their announcement couldn’t have come at a better time. The story was immediately picked up by everyone, from the smallest music/tech blogs to the largest traditional print/television press across the globe, much of it virally. Music fans cheered, the RIAA heralded it as a death knell, and Radiohead basked in the notoriety.

In the weeks after the announcement, however, it turned out that the campaign was, in fact, a giant PR/Marketing stunt. Consumers wondered why the album had been offered in such a low quality bitrate (160 kbps, to be exact). As it turned out, this was due to the fact that Radiohead had been planning on releasing the album in a traditional CD format, (as an $81 super premium box set, no less) all along. Due to the huge buzz created by the campaign, they in fact found themselves in an old fashioned bidding war over the album with major distributors. It was a high-class problem to have and the digital downloads peaked at 1.2 million in October, with the average price paid at approximately $6/download. Although the situation may have left a bad taste in the mouths of some fans, it did little to damage the huge amount of positive coverage they received.

So what is the take away from all of this? Firstly, allowing consumers to decide what they would pay for a product or service takes the power away from the corporation and puts it squarely in their own hands. This is called individuation of consumption (read The Support Economy, by Shoshana Zuboff and James Maxmin, for more on the concept), and addressing it can have giant benefits in relation to customer acquisition and loyalty. It’s a highly innovative concept, and we’re guaranteed to see more companies embracing it in coming years.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, regardless of how exquisitely planned your marketing strategies are, there is always a bit of the ol’ “being in the right place at the right time”. This is not to be confused with luck, and does not mean one cannot plan for it. A company (in this case, Radiohead) can assess the consumer’s pain point (paid vs. free downloads), and wait for the correct “pain apex” (mounting anger towards the RIAA) to offer a solution (Pay What You Want). Regardless of the true intentions of the “In Rainbows” campaign, it set forth a completely new idea for artists (and companies) to address and engage consumers, and I applaud them for their revolutionary and brilliant marketing tactics.

OLPC missing a golden opportunity

My friend Michael Gartenberg made some comments today regarding the OLPC (one laptop per child) “G1G1″ program. When I was in Boston with Bug Labs last month I had the opportunity to meet with some of the OLPC staff. Great folks, really dedicated to a good cause (which obviously has room for improvement, but it’s better than nothing). While there I made a comment about how I felt the “buy one, give one” is a great starting point, they are missing out on a huge opportunity to raise even more money and awareness.

The current program (which ends on Nov 26, so get moving!) allows anyone in the US or Canada to “purchase” an OLPC (aka XO Laptop) for $399, which automatically donates a second OLPC to someone in need. Very nice. But what about people with a higher net worth, who are interested in supporting the cause with more money? Sure, they can donate more cash, but in my eyes this is a total opportunity to have a big win-win by appealing to ego.

Whether we all like it or not, there’s a certain amount of pride/vanity associated with charitable contributions. There’s a reason most buildings on campuses have names on them, I don’t recall a single class in Anonymous Hall. People like to get a bit of recognition for their charity. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think the OLPC initiative should support the ability to gain recognition.

My proposed program would have the ability to donate higher amounts, say $2500, $10K, and up. At each plateau you’d give XX laptops to good causes, and you yourself would still get just one. The difference is you’d get a “special” one. The special part? Different colors. For example, instead of the basic green, at $2500 you get a blue one. At $10K it’s purple. At $50K it’s gold. Etc…

This is a very simple win-win in my eyes. It’s a win for OLPC, as they’d likely raise more money from those who have it at their discretion. Further, they’d be doing it with a method that has virtually no impact on their cost structure, it would cost literally pennies more to stock a few extra color chassis (vocab tip of the day: the plural of chassis is… chassis). It’s then a win for those interested in the donations, as they get a little bit of extra recognition for their contribution.

Sure, in an ideal world people would just give whatever they can to support causes. But we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world with many different motivations, and whether good or bad, I’d rather leverage ego-driven desires if the result is greater altruism.

Hello world.

Welcome to our Web site and blog. As you can see, we’re starting a little sparse and logo-free, but that’s because (a) we’re focused on our clients’ work, and (b) we couldn’t really find a designer we loved. But we didn’t want to let that pesky little detail of “can’t find a good logo” slow us down (any more than it already has, that is).

As an intro, I’m Jeremy, the founder of Stage Two Consulting. You can read more about me and the rest of the team here, but we’re basically a small group of marketing folks here to help consumer technology companies. In a nutshell, we focus on marketing as it pertains to product, strategy and communications. We’ve got a strong understanding of how marketing has dramatically changed since the 90’s, and are here to help bridge that gap for companies with good ideas or products and how to best reach the modern consumer. Read here to learn more about our services.

This blog is going to be our vehicle for talking about consumer technology marketing. We’ll put up case studies about tactics that were (and were not) successful for our clients, and also openly share a lot of our general philosophies and strategies while we are at it. Think of this as a blog about “open marketing”, as we feel strongly that’s a key component about what we do.

Thanks for visiting, and please, call anytime.