CES 2025 Strategy: From Embargoes to Pepcom and More
Refreshed February 20, 2024
We’re months out from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) (January 7 - January 10, 2025). If you haven’t started strategizing your plan of attack yet, the time is now.
If you took into account our checklist, you hopefully already booked your travel and hotels – or you’ll be booking soon. Most importantly, you’ve started figuring out or determined where your “home base” would be that keeps you close to the action and starts submitting for key awards.
You are probably discussing how to stand out. We don’t blame you; it’s a jungle out there. Thousands of brands are pushing their stories and products to countless media outlets. Knowing where yours fits in is a challenge.
This article will zero in on your CES 2025 strategy with a PR lens. We’ll cover who you should bring, the elements of successful CES PR campaigns, plus the CES media events: CES Unveiled, Pepcom, and Showstoppers.
Define your Business Goal
Without a clear business goal communicated to all stakeholders, you can’t have a great strategy. Keep in mind that your PR team is part of those stakeholders. They will recommend targeted PR approaches to your CES 2025 strategy based on your goals. For example, if you are:
Unveiling a product – Most products featured at CES are at least months away from launch. Make sure you have a working prototype at the show to drum up interest for review samples down the line.
Differentiating yourself from the competition – What sets you apart? We have one client who took a stand in culture, diversity, and inclusion at CES, so our focus was on building the right partnerships to maximize the message.
Creating buzz – Here’s where you need a “big idea.” For Carve, one year, this was about hosting a live demonstration of two nursing moms massaging and pumping breast milk to launch Nurture by Imalac. Another time, we brought a Britney Spears look-a-like.
Focusing on networking – Some brands just want to make as many connections as possible. Your in-the-know PR team can help with events to attend or reporters to set up briefings with.
Promoting business growth – Since CES is heavily product and announcement-based, PR pros might recommend making B2B clients available for reporter interviews or securing speaking opportunities at the many events.
CES is a global stage. It’s worth it for almost everyone to attend; the bigger question is what success looks like and what do you want to get out of it. Bottom line, make it worth your time and investment.
Bring the Right Team
CES attendees are a diverse group from around the world, including media, retailers, partners, distributors, influencers, competitors, analysts, and more. It’s a whirlwind of conversations, interviews, quick hellos, handshakes, and, hopefully, deals.
A retailer who stops by your booth will have a very different set of questions about your product than a distributor. The media looking for the hottest products will want to know why and how yours is different from others in the same category in the same sector. Analysts are taking a long-tail view of the consumer electronics industry.
Bringing the right team based on your goals and objectives will help ensure you don’t miss opportunities to shine. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of team members to have on site:
CEO or executive in charge of the business – Takes the high-level meetings, participates on panels, and may also be the media spokesperson.
Sales Executives – The people or team who will talk to the target audience you’re selling to, whether that be retailers, content distributors, or another group.
Spokesperson – Who will be the face of the media? It could be the CEO or other execs mentioned, but sometimes it can be someone entirely different. For example, we’ve booked celebrity spokespersons based on our goals.
Marketing Team – They usually spearhead the overall CES experience, from creating the booths to managing hosted events or sponsorships.
PR Team – They own the media relationships and can deliver on-the-ground meetings and coverage.
Hands-on Team – Don’t forget that you will typically need people who can roll up their sleeves and aren’t afraid to pack boxes, assemble step-and-repeats, or man check-ins.
Without the right team, it’ll be hard to accomplish your goals. Make the decision early so they can start contributing — and book their travel!
Pro Tip: Arrive early! The most important media arrive a few days before the show opens for the pre-event media events and other meetings. Arrive on Monday or Tuesday and get the media’s attention before everyone else.
Understand the 2025 CES Media Events
For those brands wanting to drive consumer awareness during and immediately following CES, activating at one of the media-only focused events could be the best strategy. Three media-only events run concurrently with the main trade show: CES Unveiled, Pepcom, and Showstoppers.
CES Unveiled: This CTA-hosted event is an official part of the CES program. Unveiled is well attended to the point of being overcrowded.
From a media perspective, all of the CES “what will we see this week” comes out of the event. If you’re looking for global media coverage and to understand and influence the week’s narrative, Unveiled is the right place. One note is that you must have a CES booth to participate. This is the only media event with that requirement.
Pepcom: Pepcom is CES media speed dating. Hundreds of companies are on display and a thousand-plus media members attend. Pepcom features a plentiful amount of free food and drink.
We’ve had many clients exhibit at Pepcom over the past few years that have seen great media coverage out of it. But it can be an overwhelming experience for some. With a three-hour time constraint, you’ll want a PR strong team to ensure you give each reporter the attention they deserve.
Showstoppers: The extra hour in this four-hour event makes a difference in engaging all attendees. There’s also a good exhibitor-to-media ratio, so it’s not overly noisy or crowded to have a quality conversation with the media.
Lastly, there’s more room within the event hall, with tables nicely spread out giving you more space to pitch your product and the media more time to focus on your narrative and demo.
While Unveiled, Pepcom and Showstoppers make it easy to get face time with key reporters, editors, and bloggers, you should still have a CES 2024 strategy and the right PR team behind you. Understanding the pros and cons of each event as it relates to your goals is crucial.
Other PR Tactics in your CES 2025 Strategy
You’ve secured your booth or suite, or planned your homebase. You’ve communicated your goals and identified which team members will be on-hand to help achieve them. You’ve got your product ready to go, and your marketing team is working hard getting all the elements ready. You understand the media events.
Now, you should be developing and executing PR tactics to help meet your brand goals.
Build a Target Media List: Sure, thousands of media attend from around the world, but focus on identifying your top 10-15 targets while you’re in Las Vegas. These are the ones that will move the needle for your brand.
Start by securing previous media lists and researching and getting to know all the relevant outlets and reporters on it. Your targets should be the reporters rather than the media outlets. Look for that specific reporter among the 20 at a media outlet; One will get the job done! Finally, don’t forget to get in touch with any media you’ve communicated in the past about CES. We tend to see a lot of repeat attendees and the best relationships build over time.
Pro Tip: Our blog on Consumer Tech Reporters to Know could be a good starting point.
Consider Embargos: Shoot for media embargos as soon as your press kit is ready. The earlier you get ahead of the game, the more chance you have of getting your product covered during CES. Those are some of the most well-read pieces. The longer you wait, the more chance you have of being crowded out. Just make sure the media you choose will honor the embargo.
Submit for Still Open Awards: While the CES Innovation Awards are closed, there are still plenty of outlet-specific opportunities available. Winning an award increases awareness and prestige and pushes your brand above the noise of the week. Research the individual guidelines, who to send it to, and what the media outlets are scouting for.
Monitor for Trends: Some highly anticipated categories include 5G connectivity, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, smart cities, sports, robotics, and much more.
Be Prepared for “Showrunning:” The media are less and less inclined to schedule formal briefings with you at your booth or in your suite, so be prepared to be on the move. You have to walk the floor to find the media. Badge-spot. Camera-spot. Have a demo product with you if need be. Bring your product to the media. CES is a big, busy place, so you have to seek out the coverage you want. PR pros are experts at spotting these on-the-fly opportunities.
Three Common Elements of Successful CES PR Campaigns
The biggest consumer electronics brands in the world spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to showcase their innovations. However, most companies, including many of our growth-stage brand clients, don’t have six or seven-figure budgets.
Not having a large budget doesn’t prevent a home run. Countless brands large and small have executed newsworthy activations at CES without breaking the bank. These are a few of the common elements we’ve seen in those successful campaigns:
Value: The value proposition of your product matters more than the features. Everything you say in a two-minute conversation at your booth and every asset you share should clearly and concisely answer these questions: Why did you create this product? What problem does it solve? How will it make consumer’s lives better? Why should a reporter feature your product on their national morning show vs. your competitor?
You haven’t just created a commoditized item; you’ve created a unique product. Make sure you can articulate how your product stands out from the crowd. Value is everything.
Creativity: Marketing collateral and a demo often won’t be enough. But they’re necessary. Make them great to look at and also clearly illustrate how the product is used. Sometimes branding videos leave the media who want simple and direct answers to questions wanting more. That doesn’t mean you can’t be creative; it just means you should think of the media as a target audience and build for them appropriately.
Other ideas to consider: a media event in your booth/suite, a mutually-beneficial partnership with a bigger brand, or a celebrity engagement.
Shock Factor: Don’t be afraid to shock people, smartly. Demonstrate your product in a way people wouldn’t expect. Our breastfeeding example above is a version of this. What can you do to make the media pause, think, and choose to write about your brand?
See you in Vegas!
If you are attending CES but concerned about getting drowned out, don’t be. Focus on your goals and build a CES 2025 strategy around those goals. Bring in your PR team as soon as possible to help you manage your presence, get in front of the right reporters, and add media value to your ideas and events.
Yes, it’s a crowded place to play, but with the right team navigating it that path to success becomes much clearer.