Tag: CES

The 2019 CES Preview – Everything B2B Businesses Need to Know

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Every January, over 180,000 people converge on Las Vegas to place their bets on the coolest and potentially coveted gadgets the world has yet to see. The 2019 CES promises to be “the world’s gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technologies.” It’s a can’t-miss conference for marketers and business professionals from all industries — even those in the B2B space.

On this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Drew talks with Shelly Palmer, CEO of The Palmer Group, about what attendees can expect and look for at the 2019 conference. You’ll hear about why B2B professionals owe it to themselves and their clients to learn what is up-and-coming, as well as why attendance ROIs are so individualized. Be sure to listen to catch Shelly’s expert insights on new sub-conferences at the 2019 CES and how you can make the most out of this major networking experience.

Get up to speed on the upcoming 2019 CES – listen now.

                 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – or Podsearch

What You’ll Learn

Here’s what you can expect at the 2019 CES

Shelly explains that CES has been a proving ground for new technologies for the past 50 years. Not only will attendees catch inside glimpses into brand-new technologies already on the market, but they’ll be able to understand what’s coming in 18, 24, and even 36 months. He says it’s a “unique crystal ball into the future,” and allows you and your team to begin building new technological opportunities into your own business plans.

Networking opportunities and big-picture dreaming will be abundant in January


Virtually all aspects of modern businesses are influenced by technology. Shelly tells Drew that even giant corporations have individuals on the receiving ends of B2B sales calls, and those individuals use everyday technologies that are featured at CES. That’s why even B2B professionals have countless opportunities to add value to their companies and careers by attending the 2019 CES.

Simply reading about CES after the fact won’t give you the full scope. To truly understand the importance of this event, you have to experience it for yourself. No longer just an “electronics show,” Shelly believes that the 2019 CES is truly a “business show.” Drew, Shelly, and hundreds of other industry leaders will be at 2019 CES – will you?

“Resiliency” will be a new focus at the 2019 CES, and it’s an area of innovation that deserves your attention

One business and marketing trend you need to be aware of is “resiliency,” explained by the Consumer Technology Association (owner and producer of the CES) as the ability to “keep the world healthy, safe, warm, powered, fed and secure, even in the face of adversity.” Innovations that will help restore power and cell service to disaster-riddles areas, for example, will be featured at this sub-conference event. “The Resilience Conference will deliver world-class conference programming, insights, and solutions,” says a recent CTA press release. In order to be informed and responsible global citizens, marketers can’t afford to miss this event.

B2B and B2C marketers alike will have dozens of opportunities at the 2019 CES to expand their network, brainstorm with like-minded professionals, and plan for the future. For more information on 2019 CES and to register, visit the conference website.

Timeline

  • [0:28] This year’s CES conference is not you can’t afford to miss
  • [7:27] B2B people need to attend the CES event too!
  • [13:34] Here’s what you need to look for specifically at this year’s CES event – and what not to believe
  • [21:44] “Retargeting is evil, but it works beautifully!”
  • [26:14] Shelly transformed his family-owned consulting business into a global entity that does “engineering for engineers”
  • [33:00] “Resilience” will be a new focus at the 2019 CES
  • [32:28] The ROI on CES is very individualized, but 100% worth it

Connect With Shelly:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

Preparing for the 2018 CES

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If you’ve ever attended Consumer Electronics Show (CES) then you know it is a beast of a show with more than 4,000 exhibiting companies and covering the 2.6 million square feet of exhibit space is next to impossible especially as you are fighting through crowds of 170,000+. It might sound too overwhelming but having attended regularly since 1988 and as a marketer hoping to spot trends, I can assure you it is always worth the trouble. Inevitably, I leave CES with some new ideas, at least one new friend and a dousing of Vegas silliness.

With the 2018 CES right around the corner (Jan 8-11, 2018), I thought it would be helpful and interesting to record a special episode with the legendary tech guru Shelly Palmer.  I first met Shelly back in 2010 (when I wrote about him as the prototypical personal brand on FastCompany.com) and have spotted his ubiquitous signs at CES ever since. [Blatant unpaid plug — if you are new to CES, have a limited time frame or just want to make sure you don’t miss the big trends while you’re in Vegas, then you’d be wise to sign up for a tour of the show by Shelly and his team at The Palmer Group.]  As for my earlier point about Shelly being interesting to talk to, he didn’t disappoint!

In the podcast, we discuss why he’s excited about this year’s show and why expects to see more evolutionary products than revolutionary ones. We dive into hot topics like drones, cars, VR and AI among others. You’ll also hear Shelly school me on why I’m wrong to call Alexa (Amazon voice activation system) dumb just because she can’t infer the request Dear Evan Hansen from Evan Hansen when a Google search does that handily!  The tech challenge aside, I still think she has some cognitive development work ahead of her!  You can listen to the special episode here.

Here are a few other highlights from the interview:

Drew: What should marketers be paying attention to at this year’s CES?

Shelly: This year at CES, we’re going to have a really good look at integrations between the natural language understanding tools and the physical world. I’m pretty sure you’re going to see a lot of augmented reality because that is the toolset that is most flexible. You need great programming skills but it also yields amazing benefits – everything from a doctor looking into an incubator and seeing a heads-up display of all of the vital signs of the patient to gameplay and 100% of everything in the middle. You’ll see a lot of augmented reality. Drones and machine learning. Drones are now self-flying for the most part and there’s a bunch of companies who have taken to creating machines that not only fly themselves but with either high definition or 4k cameras in them and in some cases 8k cameras in them. And in some cases infrared cameras in them. They’re doing materials processing in the air. They can look at an insurance company like Travelers, who are the number one user of drones in the United States, and put a drone up in the air to look at the exterior damage. They can understand what happened to your roof in the air and file and process your claim without having someone go out to your house. When you think about a hurricane like we’ve had and the ability to quickly process and quickly get people the help they need who are insured, you’ll see a lot of that at CES. A lot of drone companies showing off their ability to have not only self-flying drones, but drones that can carry bigger payloads, can take better cameras with them, and fly in inclement weather or in adverse conditions that you wouldn’t have seen before. The drone story is going to be pretty big.

Drew: What else is going to be big?

Shelly: The cars are going to be out in force – driver assistance of every kind. Autonomy is coming. There’s never a lack of cool cars at CES. It’s more fun than the auto show because for us who are all semi-geeks about the technology, they come and they put their tech foot forward as opposed to their design foot forward or this guy with 500 horsepower or whatever. You’re going to see great TVs, but we haven’t had a year with a bad TV in 20 years. Let me tell you about the TVs. I can tell you I haven’t seen them yet. Let me tell exactly what I’m going to say when I get to stand in front of any TV; it’s bigger. It’s thinner. It’s got a brighter picture, higher dynamic range, wider color gamut, bigger screen, thinner. That’s sort of the joke at CES. It used to be a TV show. Now the TVs just get better.

Drew: Is there anything new that’s coming to CES?  

Shelly: What you will see this year that you haven’t seen so much before is how well integrated the home is becoming. Honestly, it is Alexa’s voice services and all of NLP systems that have caused this. Because if you think about it, when you walk in the house you have to open an app, tap a couple of buttons, open another app, and press a couple more buttons. It’s like, “Oh come on, stop it! I’ll just turn the light switch on.” But now you walk in and you say, “Alexa, lights on. Alexa, daytime scene.” Whatever you want. And boom, the house is set. The value proposition for consumers is so great. Everybody’s jumping on that. Look for integrations in ways you’ve never seen them.

CES Goes Green & Gizmo Challenge

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Spent a couple of interesting days at CES. Not surprisingly, green messages were everywhere. The Wall St. Journal provided a quick round up of some of the green initiatives in an article from CES on Monday as well as in a video. From what I saw, most of the initiatives could be lumped into these broad areas:

* Recycling: Panasonic announced a JV of CE manufacturers that will
recycle old CE equipment (called e-cycling).
* Re-engineering: Panasonic spoke about their efforts to
engineer-out all of the environmentally harmful materials in their
products over the coming years noting they were the first to
eliminate lead from their TV’s. Along these lines, Fujitsu
announced a laptop with a body that’s made from biodegradable corn
oil rather than petroleum.
* Reducing power: Panasonic also spoke about their goal to make the
majority of their products Energy Star compliant dramatically
reducing the amount of energy each of their products consume. As
one example, they introduce an update line of Viera plasma’s that
would have twice the luminance yet consume half the power of
current models.
* Carbon Offsets: The organizers of CES, the CEA (Consumer
Electronics Association), announced that they would be buying
offsets to compensate for the carbon emissions generated by the
event. I will not address the relative efficacy of offsets but
simply offer it as one more example of the pervasiveness of green
messaging at the show.

All that said, CES is about the latest and greatest gear. The fact that some of this gear is greener may influence 12% of potential buyers according to a recent Forrester study. The other 88% simply want cool stuff and lots of that was on display too. The Panasonic 150″ plasma TV was indeed the 800 pound gorilla in the room measuring 11″ wide by 6″ tall blowing away the competition on size and clarity. Sony impressed on both the hardware (a paper thin 11″ LCD monitor) and software (lots of live talent from their movie, TV and music divisions) fronts. For a more comprehensive look at the cool stuff, check out:

* BBC
* Gizmodo
* cnet

*GIZMO CHALLENGE:* During Panasonic’s Keynote address (which was amazing by the way–more on that later), Panasonic and Comcast announced a new kind of set-top box that combined a cable DVR and a portable DVD player. Basically you record your shows on the harddrive of the DVR and then you can detach the DVR and watch the shows wherever you want on a small screen that folds up from the DVR. Very cool concept. Made me wonder what other product combinations clever people might conceive. So here’s the challenge, come up with the cleverest combo gizmo and I’ll send you a pair of very cool retro Panasonic headphones. For example, why not combine a bathroom door and a Kindle to create a “Koilet” so you can read the headlines of the New York Times hands free and without wasting paper. Or perhaps combine a computer and a George Foreman grill to add some tasty nuggets to your next PowerPoint presentation. So mix and match. See what you can cook up. You have until [EXTENDED TO] April Fools Day, 2008 to dream up something amazing. An expert panel of judges will be nowhere near this context. Just me. Good luck.