CES, Shopping Comparison, and Online Promotion for 2007

It’s been almost a month since my last post, but I assure you it’s been for a good reason called…relaxing!

After Christmas and News Year, I usually take a vacation during the first week or two of January to go to Las Vegas and see the CES (Consumer Electronics Show.) For those that don’t know what CES is, its probably the largest convention in the US and is where all the major electronic companies go to release the latest and the greatest.

All the major manufactures are there including Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, and many others. From the newest HDTV’s to home automation, CES offers more new gadgets beyond any tech savvies wildest dreams. But interestingly enough, my jaw didn’t drop at the worlds largest 108” LCD TV from Samsung or even the release of the new iPhone by Apple. However, the lack of online companies and their presence did.

Sure Microsoft was there with Vista and Toshiba was there with their laptops, but online promotion, search engines, and other mediums were no where to be found (for the little looking I did) except for one that caught my eye…PriceGrabber. And might I add their booth was both filled with people and pure genius.

Now here’s a company taking advantage of a prime situation. The isles were packed with consumer electronic buyers and decision makers ripe for the picking for the right pitch. PriceGrabber, if you haven’t ever worked with them, have a very different advertising model than most of the price comparison sites. Namely, they have account managers that can prescribe advertising solutions that don’t rely on other online companies or SEM’s to execute. Simply put, if you have a website and a shopping cart, PriceGrabber can get your company exposure in front of thousands of buyers every day with little or no expertise about how the online world works. Talk about an opportunity at its finest.

Take it for what you will, but I believe that their presence at CES was a stroke of genius by their marketing team. I would be hard pressed to think that they didn’t get their moneys worth from even paying the extremely high exhibitor rates that CES requires. In addition, they had the right business model for leveraging companies looking to take a dive into cyberspace.

Where was search and other Web 2.0 promotion? Are we as online marketing professionals missing the boat for other major push vehicles like CES? For myself as an online marketer, I was left wondering where my ship had sailed…
[tags] ces, shopping comparison [/tags]