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NAB, EDU and HOW

A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog that relayed the top 5 reasons that you, as an AV professional, should go to NAB. The first of those five reasons was end user attendance.

In case you missed that piece and didn’t feel like clicking the link above, in 2016 the NAB Show had over 102,000 attendees with over 69,000 of them identifying themselves as buyers of the products and services on the floor. Of that 69,000, only about 9 percent were resellers and integrators, meaning there were more than 50,000 end-users on the floor at NAB.

Now for those saying, “that’s great but we don’t serve the broadcast end user”, let me break down that stat a little more.  Of those end users, in 2016, 1600 of them were House of Worship (HOW) buyers and 4,400 were education buyers.

Many commercial AV companies don’t think that they are in the broadcast business, however broadcast is changing.

In today’s world, churches are putting their services online and universities are streaming their classes. They are creating digital copies of these services and lectures as well and archiving them. Broadcasting is no longer just for TV and radio stations. In the era of online content, the end users you serve as an AV integrator are starting to become broadcasters in their own right, and they go to NAB in search of solutions.

As someone who worked a booth on the floor of NAB this year, I can attest to the end user attendance. I spoke to many major universities, churches of all sizes, and even to businesses that are looking to produce professional quality meetings and stream them to employees and shareholders. In many cases, these users seemed to identify with our company better than many others on the floor as our solutions align with the lower end of the broadcast market. The features, functionality and price point of our systems are geared toward their businesses and budgets because we serve a blend of broadcast and commercial AV clients.

For this reason, I was a little surprised that more commercial AV manufacturers don’t exhibit at NAB. In fact, based on the large end-user presence, it seems that NAB would even be a potentially valuable place for an integrator to invest in some floor space. I know at least a couple large ones that did.

My conversations with end users went well beyond the products we showcased in our booth. They bridged into video extension, system design, projector and screen selection, etc. The decision makers I interacted with were really interested in finding partners to help them accomplish their goals, as opposed to parts and pieces. Almost everyone of the end users I spoke with wanted some follow up and the introduction to an integrator.

So if you are an AV manufacturer or integrator that serves the HOW or education markets, and you didn’t exhibit at NAB this year, I would encourage you to consider it next year, especially if talking to end users is of value. As a manfacturer, none of our brands sell directly to end users as we always sell through a partner.  However, being on the floor helped generate product interest as well as referrals for our integrators, something they seem to like getting, (go figure!)

Hopefully I’ll see you there next year.

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