Skift Take

With so much hype and noise surrounding the Las Vegas convention experience, the Unconventional videos bring that down to a human level by focusing on the stories behind the individual attendees.

In September last year, the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority launched its “Unconventional” series of long-format, meetings-themed promotional videos showing the honest emotions of real people at quirky business events.

Yesterday, the LVCVA posted its third short film in the series, “CES 2016,” on the new Visit Las Vegas VIVA blog.

Filmed during the citywide Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January, the video highlights the Australian startup Aipoly and its journey to the U.S. to promote itself at one of the world’s largest tech conferences.

The Aipoly app uses artificial intelligence and a phone’s camera to recognize objects, which the phone pronounces so blind people can know what’s around them.

Like the first two ‘Unconventional’ videos, the format and style of CES 2016 is unfiltered and unscripted, using a handheld camera and direct point-of-view. Viewers get an authentic look at both the challenges and successes that take place at most conferences, within the contextual fantasy surrounding CES and its dizzying array of tech toys.

As a marketing vehicle, CES 2016 works on multiple levels.

The fresh, street-style documentary delivery and storytelling provide both educational and entertainment value.

In effect, this is a meetings promotional video that feels like a short indie film with three unique and endearing characters, a topical theme about the rise of tech, and a story arc that explains the startup experience.

Moreover, it’s all true. Will Aipoly get funding to go to market? You have to watch the 9:17-minute video to find out.

Also, by focusing on Aipoly and showcasing startup culture, including a startup pitch competition at CES, it shows Las Vegas is a place where creative tech companies can and want to build business. It shows Las Vegas as a place for millennials, especially.

Mostly, the video focuses on real people with big dreams and big obstacles in the way of those dreams, which we can easily relate to. Three weeks before CES, for example, the Aipoly app is recognizing objects just fine, but for some reason it’s recognizing people as tanks.

As it turns out, Aipoly did pretty well at CES. It’s a good story. It makes you want to go to Las Vegas.

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Tags: las vegas, lvcva, meetingsiq

Photo credit: Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority used the buzz around the Consumer Electronics Show as a backdrop for its latest video targeting meeting planners. LVCVA

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