The Best Buy Channel At CES: Be The Media

I love what Best Buy did for the Consumer Electronics Show this year: They became the media.

Armed with video cameras, representatives of Best Buy made the rounds of the show and reported from the floor. And the footage was not All Best Buy, All The Time. It was about the technology at CES, from the Pro Reader:

to the Peregrine video gaming glove:

to Ford’s new in-vehicle computer:

They uploaded 46 videos to their YouTube channel and featured some on the front of their Web site during the show. Best Buy even did some live streaming.

The view counts for many of the YouTube videos are low but that’s likely due to the fact that they haven’t been optimized for search.

Who needs YouTube, though, when you launch your very own online TV station?

Best Buy On is the company’s very own consumer electronics video channel, launched just prior to CES and used to showcase the technology there.

The larger point, however, is that this is a perfect example of a company realizing that they can be the media and by doing so, communicate directly with their target audiences.

In Best Buy’s case, the videos did not only that but the content reinforced Best Buy as a leader in consumer technology, as not just a place to buy technology but also to learn about it, and the videos helped to build anticipation and excitement for some of the products that will soon appear on their shelves.