What a bumpy CES means for brands and live events like SXSW in 2022

A rocky CES has become a warning sign for the live events circuit, indicating that not everyone is ready for a return to in-person conferences. Still, that doesn’t mean brands should abandon appearances in 2022; they just need to plan better. Austin-based SXSW, which is a tentpole festival for the media and tech industries, issued a notice that it would proceed with an in-person show and a virtual component in March. Meanwhile, brands that had pulled out of attending CES in Las Vegas, like LG Electronics, still have plans to send people to the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show in Orlando in February. Events and marketing leaders are also looking forward to Cannes in June. And there are upstart events building buzz, like NFT.NYC, which was a hit among cooped up crypto-entrepreneurs in 2021. The schedule still looks full for now, even if other events are in doubt, with the Grammy Awards postponed indefinitely, and E3 and the Sundance Film Festival moving online. The omicron wave of COVID-19 forced many companies to pull staff from attending CES. Major electronics companies, including LG, Lenovo, Panasonic, Google and Microsoft, withdrew at the last minute, leaving open spaces in typically packed convention center halls. Usually about 170,000 people show up to CES, which last year had to host an online-only show because of the pandemic. Consumer Technology Association organizers anticipated a far smaller headcount this year. Official numbers will be released after the show, but by all accounts lines in Las Vegas were shorter, hotel lobbies less packed, and shuttles easier to board. See the latest news from CES here. Despite the troubles, CES was also a harbinger of how events could carry on, with attendees walking around fully masked and vaccinated, and organizers handing out personal COVID-19 testing kits. Even if only tens of thousands, and not hundreds, made it to Las Vegas, that would still make CES one of the larger in-person trade shows since the start of the pandemic. “These events can happen in a responsible way, and CES was the same,” said Roxy Fata, chief operating officer of Infinite Objects, an NFT electronics display maker. “People were masked. They were very diligent with protocols. It was very organized.” Fata was the only member of Infinite Objects to make it to CES, after the company pulled out like so many others. Fata went to speak on one panel at “C Space,” a mini-tech symposium within CES, and she stayed for less than 23 hours. Fata said her stay at Aria hotel cost half the usual rates. “It was worth it to go for sure,” Fata said. Fata and Infinite Objects have been represented at other live events in the past year, too, including NFT.NYC and Art Basel in Miami in December. The company designs screens that display non-fungible token artwork, and it works with brands in this fast-evolving space, which was also one of the breakout technologies at CES. Getting out Even as companies are being extra careful not to pressure employees to attend live conferences, there are others who are on board with breaking out of quarantine. Brands and marketers thrive on live events like CES to learn about the latest innovations and create new business partnerships. During the pandemic, companies have had to adapt; to prepare for live events, but they also need last-minute options to meet virtually, according to event planners like Laura Mignott, CEO of DFlash, a New York-based cultural marketing agency. “It depends, what is your risk-reward and what are you willing to do,” Mignott said about how companies should calculate the benefits of attending major industry shows. “If you’re a brand, what are you actually doing that will make people want to leave their house.” Mignott works with major brands at live events, and plans to travel to Cannes in June, which is always one of the major stops for media, tech, advertising and entertainment insiders. The event was canceled last year due to COVID. “Our clients are not shying away,” Mignott said. “But we’re also doing stuff that makes sense, that aligns with brands that understand what the last two and half years have been about.” Read more: CES diary—A day on the ground in Las Vegas Mignott has been undecided on how to approach SXSW in Austin this year, and whether she will attend, because she protested the anti-abortion law that passed in Texas last year. The bill has galvanized women’s rights advocates who say it criminalizes reproductive rights. SXSW organizers are hoping the show draws people to Austin in March, as the festival is one of the main cultural and economic drivers for the creative community there. "SXSW is moving forward with an in-person event with additional online viewing and participation options,” a SXSW spokesperson said in a public statement this week. “Recognizing that the COVID landscape is changing rapidly, our best path is to continue working with both the City of Austin and Austin Public Health on our steps forward.” CES should awaken brands, though, to the necessity to plan for last-minute pivots to virtual events. That’s what happened to companies that had hoped to have major installations in Las Vegas like Procter & Gamble and LG Electronics. Procter & Gamble hadn’t started building its LifeLab exhibit in Las Vegas when it pulled the plug on in-person attendance last month. It helped that it had a virtual platform already set up for this year. Future events are likely to play out similarly with late decisions, said P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard. It also helped that in Cannes in 2019, even before the pandemic, P&G had a substantial augmented and virtual reality component to its physical display, he said. “We’ve just got to stick to our No. 1 principle of keeping our employees safe,” Pritchard said. For the upcoming Winter Olympics, P&G is, “hoping for the possibility of physical, but planning for the possibility of virtual, and then probably expecting a lot of hybrid, because we’re just seeing more of that. And the benefit of that is that you get much broader reach,” he added. Going virtual LG is one of the largest electronics companies at CES every year, and it planned to come this year with 100-plus-inch OLED TV screens, connected refrigerators and virtual reality demonstrations. LG scaled down its exhibit at the Las Vegas Convention Center by erecting kiosks with QR codes for attendees to scan, which took them to online tours of products. LG said that millions of people viewed its virtual press conference online. Electronics companies usually host keynote unveilings at CES, which serve as vital curtain-raisers for their products for the year. “We maximized our in-person on-site presence and continue to find ways to engage millions of people who can’t be in Las Vegas,” said John Taylor, senior VP of public affairs and communications at LG. Live shows are still key for LG, even as it adjusts to the new reality of conducting business in the time of COVID. Taylor said the company was hoping to attend the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show next month, but still deciding. LG did receive some digs from people who attended CES in Las Vegas, with some online commentators saying its QR code tours took up more space than necessary. LG said it started planning in November to switch to the virtual presentation. Brian Yamada, VMLY&R’s chief innovation officer, made it to CES, and said that LG’s bare booths at the convention center stuck out. Yamada said CES is “hard to replicate when it’s not face to face.” The ad industry was the most disrupted by CES drop-outs, because major digital ad companies like Google, Meta (formerly Facebook), Twitter, Amazon, Pinterest, Microsoft and others did not attend. Marketers are looking for content deals, partnerships, ad tech, as well as glimpses of gadgetry. Yamada said that other shows could adapt in 2022 after seeing how CES played out. Brands and events organizers need to plan for the people who show up, but also cater to the off-site crowd. “Shows need to give more thought to digital infrastructure to make sure it is as good as possible,” Yamada said. SXSW will get its chance in March, as organizers said SXSW Online XR would make its return. SXSW Online XR was an experimental virtual approximation of Austin that the festival launched last year, when it was fully remote. This week, SXSW also announced some of its first sponsors, including White Claw, and its first crypto-focused advertisers, Blockchain Creative Labs, a division of Fox Entertainment. —Contributing: Jack Neff

What a bumpy CES means for brands and live events like SXSW in 2022

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