Advent Blog

With the 2009 North American International Auto Show under­way, it is time to rec­og­nize the show­case as one of the worlds biggest dis­plays of event mar­ket­ing.

The North American International Auto Show began in 1907 at Beller’s Beer Garden at Riverside Park. Since then, it has taken place every year except for a period from 1943 – 1952. The event picked up steam quickly, as the city was home to the three major American car com­pa­nies and by 1922 the show had grown so large it had to move to an even larger build­ing on the west side of the city.

The NAIAS con­tin­ued to grow and in 1965 moved to it’s cur­rent loca­tion at Cobo Center in Downtown Detroit. Cobo Center fea­tures one of the largest sin­gle floor exhi­bi­tion spaces in the world and is capa­ble of host­ing a 600,000 square-foot show in a sin­gle hall (As automak­ers added two and three level dis­plays, that num­ber bal­looned to 1 mil­lion square feet). Since the move, the auto show has con­tin­ued to grow in both size and stature. In 1989 Toyota and Nissan chose to intro­duce the Lexus and Infiniti lux­ury brands in Detroit, cement­ing the show as an inter­na­tional event.

Currently, the auto show is in it’s open­ing run: allow­ing the press to view the cars before open­ing the show to the gen­eral pub­lic. Notably, this is the first time Chinese automak­ers will dis­play on the main floor with both BYD and Brilliance being granted space.

Since it’s incep­tion, the North American International Auto Show has been a show­case not only for auto­mo­biles, but mar­ket­ing agen­cies. As the show has evolved, the audi­ence expec­ta­tion has shifted from “show me” to “engage me.” Automakers are respond­ing by cre­at­ing inter­ac­tive dis­plays, includ­ing Scion’s new “Mix it Up,” Kiosk where vis­i­tors mix their own color and choose their own acces­sories and graph­ics to ren­der their own unique Scion vehi­cle, back­ground and audio track.