" Show, don't tell" is a mantra that applies just as much to face-to-face marketing as it does to Creative Writing 101. Exhibit managers worth their salt know that the "why" and benefits of their offerings will sway attendees more effectively than a bulleted spec sheet of prosaic features. Finding innovative ways to do this on the show floor, however, is more easily said than done.

Thankfully, GE Appliances, a Haier company, and the exhibit-marketing team behind it are no strangers to innovation. Take the former, which comprises six brands (Café, GE, Haier, Hotpoint, Monogram, and Profile), each with its own positioning and market niche. And leading up to the 2022 Kitchen and Bath Industry Show, GEA's largest event of the year, the feature-rich and tech-focused Profile brand was set to debut a first-of-its-kind industry exclusive: a line of smart washers and dryers that interface with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant. So not only do the appliances optimize such factors as soak time, water temperature, and dryer speed to get clothes clean with minimal manual settings and maximum attention to fabric care, but they also respond to spoken commands. Have you ever wanted to tell your washer to deal with your kids' smelly soccer gear and then ask it to play Marvin Gaye while you fold the towels? Well, now you can.

As for GEA's marketers, experience taught them that getting people excited about laundry is a tall order, no matter how many bells and whistles an appliance has. But it was a challenge they were more than capable of facing. In fact, the team won a 2020 Sizzle Award for hosting an in-booth VIP breakfast at KBIS that culminated in a crowd-gathering performance by Blue Man Group – an ingenious nod to the blue odor-killing UltraFresh ring in the GE brand's new front-load washers. In other words, this wasn't their first time separating lights and darks. Still, the stakes were high. "GE Appliances had not made laundry products under the Profile brand for nearly a decade," says Christina Reed, GEA's senior manager, shows and brand experience. "Our goal for KBIS was to drive excitement and bring awareness to what Profile is accomplishing with appliance innovation that is setting us apart from the industry standard."

The hard-to-get-out stain Reed's team and GEA's exhibit house, Deckel & Moneypenny Inc., needed to contend with was the all-important "showing," not just of Profile's new laundry offering but the brand's entire range of cutting-edge appliances. "In an era when it seems like everything is 'smart,' people want to understand why that feature is a benefit to them outside of just being a buzzword," Reed says. "But with Profile having so many great features, the challenge wasn't explaining what those benefits are. It was finding the best way to show how the technology intuitively brings those benefits to them."

Show Business
Essentially, GEA had three broad objectives for KBIS: differentiate the Profile area within the larger multibrand exhibit, drive attendee and media traffic to the Profile space, and clearly demonstrate how the technology in Profile appliances makes users' lives easier. GEA also had a bit of a reputation at KBIS, and marketers were keen on taking home a second consecutive Best Booth Award.
Being a house of brands, GEA exhibits in one large booth with discrete spaces designed to reference each brand's differentiators and target market. For example, the exhibit for the Monogram line, which is geared for deep-pocketed gourmands, typically oozes luxury, while the aesthetics- and customization-focused Café brand's space looks like it came from the pages of an interior design magazine. The Profile exhibit needed to stand out – but not so much that it looked disjointed. "We wanted to create an environment that was synonymous with the brand: innovative, fun, and approachable," says Steve Deckel, CEO of Deckel & Moneypenny. "What that ended up being was a sort of 'Club Profile' space with dimmer theatrical lighting that emulated the brand's colorful gradient tones, large LED walls with constantly moving messaging, and electronic dance music playing from speakers integrated into the massive sign rigged over the booth."

GEA had the nightclub; now it just needed to ensure it would have a long line of kitchen and bath designers, builders, corporate buyers, and property managers eager to get in. Based on the success of the 2020 breakfast and Blue Man Group performance, both of which took place soon after the exhibit hall opened, marketers thought a fresh take on the tactic would result in similar blockbuster results. "Our goal was to drive traffic and disrupt the monotony of the show floor in a way that was fun and unique," Reed says. "What better way to get noticed than flood the exhibit hall with a mob of dancers soon after the show opened and have them lead attendees right to the booth?" And to add substance to the spectacle, plans were made to have the performance end with a rapping emcee who would banter with Alexa and highlight all the features of Profile's new laundry offerings.

A rapper "dropping bars" would check the "telling" box. As for "showing," that solution came from a rather pie-in-the-sky idea. "In one of our meetings, we were joking about building a life-size product that people could go inside and see the technology at work in real time," Reed says. "This ultimately led us to developing that same concept, just with virtual reality." Deckel & Moneypenny reached out to the UK-based digital marketing and experience agency Novacom Group Ltd., and together they began creating a VR version of a modern kitchen where attendees would be able to see how Profile appliances work on the inside and how the brand's technology leads to indisputable benefits.

Laundry Day
On the first day of KBIS and the co-located International Builders' Show, some 70,000 attendees poured into the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. Not long after the doors opened, the LED tiles and embedded speakers in the rectangular rigged sign hanging over the Profile booth began giving visual and auditory messages (in the iconic Alexa voice, naturally) directing attendees to the space. Then, as if out of nowhere, teams of dancers in branded sweatsuits appeared in the aisles. Sourced with help from DMC Orlando, the local performers, like pied pipers, led showgoers toward and into the Profile booth. What ensued in front of a packed house was a sort of flash mob dance party capped off by a pair of young emcees who worked the crowd while skillfully delivering a scripted rap and cheeky repartee with an Alexa-enabled washing machine. (In truth, the emcees were bantering with a recording, not an actual smart appliance.)
Following the pop-up party and a pre-sentation by Profile executives, attendees were free to explore the 50-by-60-foot exhibit, which was awash in gradient pink, purple, and aqua lighting and filled with upbeat dance music. In addition to the requisite kitchen setup, Profile products such as dishwashers, ovens, and, yes, washers and dryers, were nestled in the exhibit's walls and surrounded by LED tiles and monitors displaying dynamic messaging about each appliance's smart capabilities.

The real show and tell, however, was at the VR station, where up to three participants at a time could don Oculus headsets and controllers and explore a virtual kitchen equipped with Profile appliances. In this immersive demo, "tapping" on an appliance launched a narrated experience in which attendees learned about Profile's technologies quite literally from the inside out. For instance, selecting the new smart washer transported viewers into the appliance's tub, where they saw how a suite of sophisticated sensors detect everything from how soiled a load is to how thoroughly the rinse cycle is removing detergent – and adjust the cleaning process accordingly. A similar voyage into a dishwasher put attendees in the middle of a rack loaded with tableware. As they looked around the 360-degree environment, participants saw how Profile's Microban technology minimized odor-causing bacteria and UltraFresh sensors knew when to release clean water into the cycle. "We designed our VR experience to be a tool for impactful, educational demonstrations so that attendees left the booth remembering the 'why' behind our appliances' features," Reed says.

Soaking in Success
It's said that everything comes out in the wash, and boy, did GEA clean up at KBIS. The lure of Club Profile and the opening day dance party helped marketers best their goal of a 5-percent increase in badge scans compared to KBIS 2020 by four percentage points. What's more, the brand's PR team, hoping to run its own spin cycle and conduct 50 on-site media tours, topped that benchmark as well and landed coverage in 24 publications – an accomplishment likely aided by the attention-grabbing and highly memorable VR experience.

In addition to exceeding their business objectives, Reed, her team, and Deckel & Moneypenny reveled in GEA being named Best Booth at KBIS for the second year in a row. Sizzle Awards judges were of a similar mind, calling the exhibit "a welcome break from the typical show floor." And while most marketers would rather repeat such a victory lap than do laundry, at least now they can get a washer that will listen to them talk about drayage fees. E