What do Detroit, Frankfurt, Paris, Tokyo, Geneva, Farnborough, Las Vegas, and Orlando all have in common? Among other things, these are popular sites for major industry conventions that bring automotive and aerospace innovations and new products to the public eye. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in these and other industries have become masters of event planning and execution, highly skilled at creating just the right mix of buzz and bubbly to excite crowds and grab the show daily headlines.
When expertly accomplished, all that marketing pizazz motivates prospective customers and drives sales momentum, which is vital to market share, profitability, and business valuation. Away from the bright lights and big marketing budgets evident at these trade shows, the real work begins on the long and winding road to generate ROI on all those hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars of product development investment.
