COW Articles: NAB Apple Bows Out of NAB 2008

[Randall Raymond]

“The argument that this stuff requires hands-on facetime is simply becoming increasingly irrelevant in the Day of the Internet.”

I disagree. There have been a number of studies of trade shows and the Number One thing people remember even months after a show is: A Person.

That was over and above presentations, pitches, displays, etc.

There are some things trade shows do better than the internet. Do not count out the human factor.

As to the need of ‘hands-on’ tactile experience – I can think of dozens of product categories in this business that do require that experience: camera support, lighting, grip, cases, remote anything, monitors, etc, etc. Having them all under one roof is more than convenient.

[Ron Lindeboom]

I couldn’t agree more, Raymond. And if you are willing to pay a few hundred thousand each for influencing prospects this way, have at it.

I just found out today that Apple’s direct costs for attending NAB is over $15 million. I know that small companies I know are close to a half million per, and so the cost per new sale — let’s be real, most old customers will keep buying if you do not betray their trust — and so the cost PER NEW SALE is the yardstick that many of these companies are now looking at.

You are free to disagree but you are not the one spending the money. And if you use Final Cut and are willing to have $15 million put against it just so you can feel good for a bit, then you are basing your decisions on unsound business opinions, not principles.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
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[Randall Raymond]

‘You are free to disagree but you are not the one spending the money.’

In the end, I am the one spending the money as a new customer. Your argument against trade shows is not a new one. I’ve heard them before when I was in the industry.

Trade shows can do many things that the internet cannot, and never will, be able to do. I tried to point those things out in my previous post.

And lest we forget, many exhibitors are there for the benefit of their dealers and to get new dealers. They are not counting on sales AT the show. For them, it’s money well spent.

[Tim Wilson]

I’ll add that millions of buying decisions by pros in our industry have been made without going to tradeshows. They’re made in the much closer contact provided by road shows, and in the MUCH closer contact provided by VARs, many of whom will provide eval units for the asking.

There’s absolutely not one single thing about a purchasing decision at a tradeshow that can’t happen more efficiently and effectively somewhere else.

Not in theory. In reality.

Somebody is going to argue that I’m wrong, that shows are essential, etc. etc. But I see that as theory only, not verified in anything beyond individual experience. I went to all my NABs AFTER I spent more on my equipment than I did on my house, and I lived to tell the tale…as, again, millions of others have.

I’ll go farther than Ron did…as I usually do…which is why his are the bylines on such articles. I believe that it’s the responsibility of every customer to demand that their favorite vendors NOT have booths at tradeshows.

Sure, go to make deals as Avid and Apple will, but which is better for you as an FCP customer — better for the entire FCP community today and its future growth: the development team creating artificial deadlines and demos, or spending those million person hours actually working on the product?

A no-brainer. Staying home is best for the product. Best for the company. Best for its customers, all of whom have a multitude of better ways — ALL of them are better — to find out the details of a product.

Besides, that $15 million to go to NAB comes out of YOUR POCKET. Why on earth would you want Apple to spend your money like that? Or the proportionally MUCH larger expenditures that smaller companies incur? It’s a colossal waste that’s not doing you any good, and not doing the company nearly as much good as it might have around the turn of the century.

I’ll go further (again) and say that tradeshows are the least reliable ways to find out if a product will work for YOU in the real world, because the people in the booth are the least qualified to tell you anything about how it works in the real world.

Yes, information from actual people is important for making decisions. And there are thousands of people here in the Cow who can tell you EXACTLY how something works — IF it works — in far more detail than a product person in a booth will ever experience.

So I go back to my starting point. For every person who makes a decision based on a tradeshow, there are thousands who make their decisions in other venues. HUNDREDS of thousands of those decisions are made outside of NAB every month. It’s not going to be any different in April than it is today.

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Randall Raymond] “In the end, I am the one spending the money as a new customer.”

Wow, I had no idea that you were going to say that.

:o)

But you are in fact NOT the one spending a dime for any of it, as you aren’t using Final Cut last I looked. You also do not use Macs from reading your posts around the COW. So I highly doubt that Apple press events and Apple user gatherings have much genuine interest for you.

And arguing that you are a prospect that Apple is losing access to is stretching reality a bit much, as you come here everyday and I have little doubt that you can learn far more here about Final Cut (were you really interested), than you could at one of Apple’s highly scripted and rehearsed demos at NAB.

Considering that Apple tech support itself refers users with difficult issues that they can’t solve, here to the COW in hopes of getting an answer, I have to smile that NAB is so “indespensible.”

As I said in my article, most of the dealers I talk to — and I talk to many all the time — tell me that they go to NAB because they use co-op advertising money (a rebate sum based on a percentage of the product bought by the dealer) to attend and so if they carry enough products, the money isn’t coming out of their pocket.

But these same dealers tell me that if it all came out of their pocket, they couldn’t afford to be there.

$15 million is a lot of money and would mean that Apple would have to do a LOT of new business to justify that kind of expense.

Apple has little left to prove to anyone with Final Cut Studio. You are either going to buy it or you aren’t — and likely most of those attending already own it. (It isn’t “prospects” that were the ones running down the aisles at show open last year, it was the true believers. And they’d buy the Next Big Thing whether or not Apple was at NAB.)

As I said, having $15 million slammed against a product to have to recoup could mean radical changes in the way that a product grows and is supported — especially when the massive sales growth curve starts to fall off.

Business is business. Fan clubs are fan clubs. There is a time when the two shall meet. Other times, they no longer share goals and objectives that are as mutually synergistic.

But as I said elsewhere, Avid and Apple may be the first two companies to abandon this highly overpriced and overrated shindig, but they surely will not be the last. Mark my words, in a few years NAB will be back to its single building size and the halcyon days of the multimedia revolution will be a chapter from its past.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
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[Randall Raymond]

[Tim Wilson] “So I go back to my starting point. For every person who makes a decision based on a tradeshow, there are thousands who make their decisions in other venues. HUNDREDS of thousands of those decisions are made outside of NAB every month.”

Decisions influenced by dealers and their salesmen who worked the shows of their manufacturers. It’s a much bigger dynamic than you are painting.

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Randall Raymond] “Decisions influenced by dealers and their salesmen who worked the shows of their manufacturers. It’s a much bigger dynamic than you are painting.”

When I spent $75,000 for my first Media 100 back in 1994, I had never been to NAB nor had the salesperson I worked with at the dealer in San Francisco.

I have bought many times the number of things over the years from dealers than I have from NAB. The truth is, I hate carrying around anything on the floor and would much rather buy outside NAB.

There is no one-size-fits-all except in a world where the majority of people dress funny.

I have no doubt that many people like NAB. I love going to see my friends but little else really excites me as I know that all I have to do is pick up the phone and call one of my friends (if I can’t find the answer online), and I can find the answer I need.

I put WAY more credence on the value of user feedback and commentary than I do on a salesperson. (Even though I know many good ones and work with a number directly on my own purchases.) But when it comes to knowledge, I don’t know any salesperson that can rival the aggregate knowledge of a huge body of users kicking on a tool from a wide variety of usages and focus.

Last I looked, NAB wasn’t hiring genies in the bottle and while I have HUGE respect for platform artists like Tim Kolb (who has worked at NAB for years with companies like Adobe and Canopus and others), I think that even Tim Kolb would admit that there’s something to be said for an aggregate body of knowledge like that found at the COW. Just as there is indeed value to be had in talking face to face with someone like Tim at NAB. It’s just that it’s gotten increasingly hard to justify the escalating expenses that are associated with presenting at their show.

The real issue is that NAB just keeps raising the rates and they are the ones who themselves are killing their very own goose that lays the golden eggs.

I just got a PDF sent to me about a week ago to renew our contract from last year in which we bought a full page ad in the NAB Show Daily magazine. It was $3,800 last year and the price was around $7200 for the same ad this year. Ridiculous, I told them. “Are you smoking crack?” was actually closer to what I said.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
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[Tim Kolb]

[Tim Wilson] “I’ll go further (again) and say that tradeshows are the least reliable ways to find out if a product will work for YOU in the real world, because the people in the booth are the least qualified to tell you anything about how it works in the real world.”

I think it might be best if you guys back this down a touch…this statement was frankly, absurd.

I work NAB… I have had people follow me from manufacturer to manufacturer’s booth to find me because they think I have valuable information. A LOT of respected Cow contributors work at NAB to add exactly that ‘real world’ perspective that you say is missing. You guys can make the case that the event is expensive without any problem at all…I’ve had opportunities to see the rental costs of a non-descript bar-height chair in the LVCC…it’s larceny quite honestly.

However, saying we’re all just talking heads is such a ridiculous generalization that I think it’s below you.

The body of knowledge at the Cow is certainly formidable (responding now to Ron) and Ron’s article certainly spells out his thinking very clearly…

…but while I think that the cost/benefit of tradeshows is certainly in question, I think asserting that the people in the booths have no useful information is over the top.

Methinks you guys doth protest too much…the economics make sense…I’d leave the rest alone for now until the fallout or lack of it demonstrates how effective the options are for these companies.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
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[Steve Wargo]

[Randall Raymond] ” Your argument against trade shows is not a new one.”

It’s not Trade Sows in general but NAB in particular. After 15 straight years of attending, I didn’t go the last two years and I realized then that I didn’t really miss anything. To go to NAB, I leave on Saturday, fly in, stay in an overpriced hotel, rent a car and spend money. I like to see the latest gadgets and usually have a $5k budget for little crap. In ’05, we bought Ultra for $1100 and have never opened the box.

There are some things that you need to see in person: Cameras, lighting and grip, sound gear, and all the gadgets that I just spoke about.

Panasonic has local shows at their Phoenix dealers and as for Sony, I can jet to BandPro and back in the same day for $120. While I’m there, it’s Matthews Grip, FilmTools, and others in the same day. I lose one day of work and if I have any type of brain matter at all, I’ll find a job to do while I’m there, make it a 2 day trip and bring home a couple grand to boot.

As for software companies, almost everyone has a trial version and with the COW at our fingertips, we have an unbiased panel to keep us from making foolish, uneducated decisions. The level headed members far out weigh the silly fanboys. And a bunch of them have dropped out of sight, haven’t they?

I do disagree with Ron in one area. NAB will lose the South Hall but they will keep the North and Central Halls. NAB is much like SONY, in that, if they think that you need them, they will take every dime they can. Remember when we had to pay $30 for a 30 minute BetaSP tape and we also had to pay to attend NAB? And the guys from JVC would buy you lunch.

I think that the Avid and Apple folks should court the buyers by offering them trips to their place to demo gear based on a sale. Discreet used to have people come to Santa Monica to make the “Final” decision. And when we sold Discreet products at NAB, we had an *Edit Suite downstairs at the Sands for private demos. We had people from several film production companies including Lucas Films, (and Danny Devito) sit in quiet, secluded, comfortable suites while we wowed them with the latest. And it could have been any software show, not necessarily NAB. Apple would be better served at DV Expo, WEVA, and the Gov’t Video events.

And, when we went to NAB ’05, we missed on a simple job that would have net about $6k and a long term client. OUCH!

Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona
It’s a dry heat!

Sony HDCAM F-900 & HDW-2000/1 deck
5 Final Cut (not quite PRO) systems
Sony HVR-M25 HDV deck
2-Sony EX-1.

[Christopher Wright]

I’ll add my vote to Randall’s for exactly the same reasons he mentioned, and the ones I mentioned in a thread below this one. Following your logic, Apple is wasting all its money on all the trade mags advertising as well. Care to guess how much that sends them back?? We can much better explore any buying info needed on the web. Forget MacWorld, IBC, Siggraph, etc. Just stay home and be further disconnected from the world, your professional peers, the people who actually make and sell the products you buy, and any tactile sensation of a tripod, camera etc.

I’ll second Walter on his earlier observation as well:

“Not sure why we have yet another thread started on this topic when there’s a very good discussion going on down below. I can never understand that.”

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