The challenge

GE Appliances has been around as a brand for over a century, with product in over 60% of US households.  The GE brand is recognized around the world.  While GE Appliances, a Haier company encompasses several brands, the core of the business in the United States, especially amongst the target audiences of designers, builders, property managers, and specifiers is GE branded appliances. The GE House of Brands includes Monogram, Café, Profile, GE Appliances, Haier, and Hotpoint

KBIS is GE Appliance’s largest show of the year, and most important to reach their core business. The show typically takes a full year of planning by a dedicated team. With the 2021 show transitioning to virtual only a few months in advance, all planning included contingency options for hybrid or full-virtual execution. It was anticipated that, following the trend seen across many in-person trade shows of this stage in the COVID pandemic, that overall traffic would be down, though the quality of attendees would be strong. This tempered goals, though they were set to stay on par with 2020 at pre-pandemic levels.

Luckily, 2022 did mark the return for in-person for KBIS, and while the overall footprint of the GE Appliances’ brand booths was smaller than in 2020, the Profile brand area remained at the same size. Each appliance brand has a distinct personality and target; Profile’s is that of a feature-seeker and early-adopter for technology. Post-pandemic, there is a surge in demand for Smart Home products with forecasts that by 2026, the smart home market will reach US$317 billion, up 5% over pre-COVID-19 estimates. This positioned the Profile brand with their lineup of innovative product launches as a prime candidate to be a star at KBIS 2022. 

Primary among the new products at KBIS for Profile was their entirely new line of laundry products. GE had not made laundry products under the Profile brand for nearly a decade, but with an industry exclusive to offer Alexa-enabled laundry, it was the perfect opportunity to re-enter that market. Combined with GE’s other innovative laundry technologies including UltraFresh™ Vent System, Microban® Antimicrobial Technology, and integration into their SmartHQ™ app, Profile’s messaging centered around “This is smarter cleaning.”

The booth would also include other additions to Profile’s already robust lineup of smart appliances including the much-awaiting addition of a fully-functional microwave to their Kitchen Hub™, a 27-inch integrated smart-touch screen and ventilation combo that fits easily above the range at the center of the home.

The solution

While their neighboring brand booth, GE Appliances, featured a romantic pink kitchen, with plush red velvet chairs, heart-shaped pillow, and replete with florals, Profile’s look was sleek, futuristic, and leaned masculine. Mimicking the familiar layout of an Apple store, the exterior walls of the booth were arranged into product-specfiic vignettes featuring large LED walls with constantly moving messaging highlighting the features of the products. 

An LED hanging sign included integrated speakers and theatrical lighting to set the mood for the booth and  adding pops of color to the cool, neutral color scheme of the physical materials.

With an eye toward driving traffic to all the brand booths, GE sought to generate buzz by featuring the technology in the Profile booth. A pop-up party was scheduled one hour after the open of the show. After allowing enough time for traffic to filter onto the show floor, GE began broadcasting looping music from the speakers in the Profile hanging sign. This was punctuated by a custom message using the iconic “Alexa voice” directing attention to the Profile booth. The content on the LED screens was synced to Alexa’s messaging.

Next, dancers emerged into the aisles wearing branded Profile sweatsuit onesies. Like pied pipers, they led attendees toward and into the Profile booth for a live performance by a rap artist extoling the virtues of having Alexa in your laundry pair. 

After the flash-mob and music performance, the presentation was led by GE Appliances executives, detailing the features and benefits of Profile’s technology-driven laundry solutions.  

Once the laundry presentation was complete, attendees were encouraged to tour the entire Profile booth which included a Virtual Reality tour, offering an inside peek into Profile technology and products.

The results

As anticipated, Profile was a star of the show, generating significant attention with the style, lights and sound, drawing attendees from across the show floor. Traffic at the show was surprisingly good, with the ratio of attendees to exhibitors up 9% over 2020 with 48% being brand-new attendees. The previous in-person KBIS show in 2020 had been hailed as the busiest and most successful in GE’s long history of exhibiting at the event, but even with a smaller overall footprint for the GE Appliances House of Brands, the results exceeded most goals.

Overall booth scans nearly doubled at 196.5% compared to 2020

Scans identified as qualified leads more than doubled at 217.1% compared to 2020 

Profile had 24.4% of total badge scans, an increase of 9% compared to 2020 and it was the second-most visited brand in the GE Appliances space, indicating it was on the must-see list for many attendees. Profile captured 276% more scans than the GE Appliances booth.

Dwell time in the Profile booth is estimated to have increased by 2 minutes, short of the goal of 3 minutes. This could have been caused by the sheer amount of traffic not allowing attendees to take their time at individual stations. 

The PR group conducted 51 on-site media tours plus an additional 18 hard hat tours and 129 virtual media previews resulting in 24 publications. 

GE Appliances was awarded KBIS Best Booth. This was their second win, the first being in 2020, and preceded in 2019 when they earned the Best Large Booth award.