Virtual events face hard reality

The cancellations of the Montreal and Toronto auto shows, announced this month, seem like a bad omen for other events that have gone digital.

The shows, scheduled for January and February, were reinvented as online-only happenings, like so many other events in the COVID-stricken year. But too few automakers wanted to participate to make it worthwhile. Those that chose to sit out the show directed their digital funding into standalone initiatives, Jason Campbell, the general manager of the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto, told Automotive News Canada.

That's a problem that resembles the conundrum that major international shows have struggled with in recent years, even before this novel coronavirus started running amok.

Companies considering a high-tech display and splashy presentations like to have data to back that kind of spending. A favored metric in that world is "share of voice," which measures how much industry coverage in a given day or week is about a particular company or brand. It's a measure that seems destined to punish big auto shows. If 20 or 30 companies are all making news, it's unlikely that any one of them will get a large share of the coverage — and if one does, then all of the others get disappointed and jealous.

Shifting in-person events to online formats has been a mixed bag: Without the burden of travel and hotel expenses, attendance is often higher — as can be participation of top-level executives, whose time is so valuable. But the impact of watching a screen or even conversing in a video chat lacks the intimacy and intensity of in-person encounters.

The thing about the big, international auto shows, such as those in Detroit, New York and Los Angeles, is that there are two components to them. There are the newsy product reveals and executive interviews, which are being squeezed by the aforementioned budgetary and share-of-voice concerns. But there's also the public days, where consumers can sit in the latest models and field incentive offers, if they're in the market. That part of auto shows continues to thrive. When people will pay to shop your product — that's a winning proposition.

The Canadian shows are less like Detroit's than those in, say, Dallas or Denver: Skip the news, just show the cars. News works OK online, but if you're a shopper who wants to sit in the latest pickups before deciding what to buy — screen-watching just isn't the same.

Trade shows are a different animal altogether. But the Canadian developments seem foreboding for a couple of major events coming up early next year: CES and the NADA Show.

CES, the consumer electronics show that is usually held in Las Vegas, has grown into the pre-eminent auto show in North America — even as the transportation industry vies for attention there with gaming, photography, robotics and every other type of breakthrough technology one can imagine.

Switching to a virtual format this year led to a partnership with Microsoft, which has a suite of software for group meetings and what is now essentially a video production, said Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, which hosts CES.

"We're also creating it so that exhibitors will have their own video presence and an interactive link which allows them to meet with potential customers, show off technology, and it'll be a very different experience," he explained on Automotive News' Daily Drive podcast.

Last year in Las Vegas, we saw some pretty interesting news from automakers, most notably Hyundai showing a concept of a flying car it intends to make for Uber, and Toyota announcing its plans to build a futuristic, high-tech community called Woven City, a nod to its past as a manufacturer of automated looms.

Will such audacious efforts be revealed during a different, digital CES, alongside dozens or hundreds of other video presentations? Perhaps. Or they may decide they'll get more attention another week.

The entirety of the event also benefits from its tradition of top-flight keynote speakers, which this year includes General Motors CEO Mary Barra. I have no doubt that registrations will be huge when they begin Dec. 1.

The next month, the National Automobile Dealers Association will hold its annual convention online instead of in New Orleans, home to two classic cuisines: Cajun and creole. That is not a completely irrelevant aside: Breaking bread with counterparts from around the country is an important part of each year's gathering.

But there is other business to attend to, including the franchise meetings and education workshops. Speakers haven't been announced, but the technology platform for exhibitors is being put together and vendor interest, I'm told, is solid.

Show organizers are optimistic that a record number of dealers and employees will attend online, given the relative simplicity of logging on. But one has to wonder how compelled they will be to stay engaged with the screen over three days.

COVID-19 has forced us all to be flexible and creative. Some things can be adapted, others have to be set aside for a year — or reconsidered altogether.

Maybe some of this year's video innovations will stick around after the pandemic and change how people communicate and do business. People often complain about the long lines, spread of colds, air-travel hassles and overpacked itineraries. But in this year of frequent isolation, many of us long for that human connection and the opportunity to look at the American experience from the perspective of another city.

I fear 2021 will be an underwhelming year for these two hallmark events. But it won't mean that they're in regression or waning in relevance, just fighting off a virus.