How can data transform a trade show exhibit into a powerful driver of brand awareness, engagement, and ROI? Siemens, in partnership with Freeman’s A/V team and agency, Sparks, brought a reimagined exhibit to CES 2025 that was based on the insights collected at its award-winning CES 2024 exhibit and throughout the year. The exhibits were designed to effectively showcase how technologies like industrial artificial intelligence, digital twins, and the industrial metaverse are driving innovation and reshaping everyday experiences.
EM sat down with Stacey Gromlich, senior director-audience engagement and global events at Siemens, for a deeper dive into the brand’s robust approach to measurement and the insights that informed its exhibit program.
The Long-term Strategy
For Siemens, the multi-pronged measurement approach for trade shows and events is part of a holistic marketing and communications strategy and involves an ever-evolving tech stack and the collaboration of multiple teams. In the booth, the gathered leads get ranked and uploaded into Salesforce, enabling the sales teams and leadership to make relevant decisions in real time, as well as facilitate follow-up after the show.
Attendees also participate in exit surveys, which include benchmark questions designed to collect data year over year, as well as questions that measure the success of current campaigns and the impact of introduced changes, such as increasing the number of experts in the booth. Specific paths with follow-up questions allow the brand to drill down to granular insight. Engagement is also measured across social and traditional media.
Redesigning the Journey and Content
For CES 2025, the main focus was on driving brand awareness of Siemens as a global leader in industrial technology and also engaging with customers in various stages of the purchase journey. The exhibit used some of the same architectural elements as 2024 to deliver on the sustainability goals, but the experience was reconfigured based on the previous year’s survey responses to drive higher awareness and engagement.
“We learned that more wasn’t more,” Gromlich says. “We also learned that the awareness of Siemens as a technology company was growing [88 percent in 2024 compared to 66 percent in 2023], but attendees wanted more technical content and examples of how Siemens products and solutions were solving our clients’ challenges.”
The experience this year began with a 23-foot-tall immersive theater with 270-degree screens and multidirectional sound, where attendees embarked on a cinematic journey highlighting Siemens’ global impact through customer success stories like JetZero, Samsung, Sony, Wayout Water and their partner ecosystem. From there, they were invited to explore how the “digital threads” introduced in the case studies applied across multiple industries and highlighted the positive effects from personal, local communities and global perspectives, and to have one-on-one conversions with experts. As an added incentive to complete the booth experience, attendees could collect stickers along the way representing innovation to add to a branded water bottle they’d receive at the end.
More Scenes from the Booth:
Separating the Meeting Space
This year, customers with pre-scheduled meetings enjoyed a more elevated experience, with a designated check-in and access to meeting space that didn’t land them in the middle of the booth action. In addition to the immersive “Innovation” space, designed around digital threads, and bookable meeting rooms, a new comfortable lounge was available for conversations.
Conducting Targeted Tours
Pre-booked tours tailored to attendees’ specific interests and challenges were also leveled up this year. By leveraging pre-tour insights, Siemens ensured that each group received personalized information aligned with their needs and could quickly see how technology applied to their challenges. The introduction of headsets minimized distractions from the busy show floor. This approach not only increased the number of tours conducted, but also improved the quality of engagement, leaving visitors with a clear understanding of the brand’s innovations and their potential to drive business success.
Results, and What’s Next
The exhibit design, content, and engagement changes yielded tangible results for Siemens. “We raised the satisfaction score considerably,” Gromlich says. “It is huge for us because we attribute the ‘very satisfied’ sentiment to having more Siemens experts in our booth this year and the one-on-one conversations that drove value.”
The sales pipeline is also getting a serious boost. “We are seeing threefold in potential existing opportunity for the amount of spend on the program, which is what you want from the sales acceleration perspective,” Gromlich says. The internal sales enablement program makes it easier to track the value of the brand’s presence at CES and other trade shows and events.
The company’s industrial AI tools are already instrumental in their customers’ data analytics and increasing their efficiency, and now the question is how it can fuel experiential. Gromlich says, “It’s definitely helping us streamline analytics—what used to take weeks now takes a day—but from the overall experiential marketing perspective, we’re just starting to tap its potential.”
Photo credit: Sparks (featured); drewbirdphoto.com
