Though the promise of warmer days for the North American International Auto Show are appealing, new data shows Detroit’s January dates still flex superior over other rival events.
We’re talking about the proposed change to move the Detroit auto show from January to October. The latest news on the matter comes from The Detroit Free Press in a Thursday report, which looked at research and data that highlighted the success of NAIAS 2018.
Despite a lack of high-profile debuts and bitter-cold weather, NAIAS managed to increase media coverage by 46 percent compared to 2017. Additionally, said coverage reached 584 million people, compared to 285 million from the Los Angeles auto show. We’ll remind you, LA is quite warm.
And even as organizers of the Detroit show work to move away from the Consumer Electronics Show, which takes place shortly before NAIAS, there’s more good news. Automotive coverage at CES dropped 23 percent compared to 2017, while NAIAS increased. NAIAS also outpaced all other shows in social media engagement and added new followers at a quicker pace than rival shows.
The data does not include the 2018 New York auto show, which was a strong event this year with more high-profile debuts.
But, the data itself suggests Detroit in January isn’t dead yet.
Comment
Automobiles don’t need to be present at the CES because only a few items are electronic, mostly in the navigation and entertainment. All of that should be added to the regular auto shows instead.
Vehicle buyers don’t choose their purchases just on electronic content.