John
Dear manufacturer (and Munich-High End 2022 exhibitor),
How are you? It’s been a while since we convened in Germany’s second-best city for the High-End Show. Three years of pandemic life is a long time between drinks. I’m am writing to you today to ask: are you exhibiting at Munich High-End 2022 next month? Yes? Great! I’d like to help you get the word out to attendees about new product/s that you might be showing.
My plan is to record a “Munich High-End 2022 preview” podcast episode on the 1st of May. Twittering Machines‘ Michael Lavorgna will be my co-host. The podcast will go live on 5th May, two weeks prior to the show opening its doors on the 19th of May.
Why a podcast? I’m glad you asked. The Darko.Audio podcast has enjoyed steady growth since we started in 2019. Each episode now reaches 15,000 – 20,000 listeners. That’s quite a bit more than the number of people reading a news announcement on this website. Just as websites ate print media, podcasts and videos are beginning to eat websites. Publishers doing all three (as we do), get to have their cake and eat it. And it’s a MUCH bigger cake.
To stand a chance of being featured in our ‘Munich 2022 preview’ podcast, I’ll need the following from you via email:
1) Details of the new product/s that you plan to show in Munich. Three paragraphs should cover it. No white papers or backstories, please. Just the basic facts.
2) Photos of the product/s: jpeg or png, 1920px on the longest side. Why photos when a podcast is an aural medium? Because the podcast won’t only go out to Spotify, SoundCloud and Apple Podcast listeners. It will be posted here on Darko.Audio along with the show notes that include manufacturer URLs and photos.
3) Pricing in € and/or US$. Never forget pricing.
4) Your M.O.C. exhibitor location and who you’ll be showing with (if anyone) e.g. “Atrium 4.2 F225 and F231e, showing with Lyravox”.
Please send your email to john AT darko DOT audio. The subject line should read “Munich 2022 preview podcast”.
Hang on. Before you reach for your Outlook or Gmail, we have a few T&Cs to cover:
1) Your product should be a NEW product. Nothing that predates 1st March 2022.
2) No dealers or distributors. If that’s you and you want in, please ask the manufacturer concerned to contact me with the specifics as outlined above.
3) This offer is not available to any manufacturer unveiling a product at the show but embargoing the news until show kick-off. The very nature of a preview is to spill the beans on what’s to come. And if you’ll allow me to be candid for a moment: why save the product announcement until showtime when you risk attendees (and the press!) reading about your new fancy-schmancy whatever for the first time in show coverage published after the event? This has happened to me on numerous occasions.
Furthermore – and I don’t wish to sound impertinent – but isn’t the ‘announce at the show’ way of doing things a hangover from the pre-Internet days when the print mags roamed the earth; and readers would thumb the pages of show reports from distant lands a month later? Just because that’s the way you’ve always done it doesn’t mean it has to be the way you always do it. By announcing before the Munich show, attendees (including press!) know what you’ll be showing and where to find you and can arrive forearmed with questions. Questions and cameras. And Instagram accounts. And forum / Facebook group memberships. And YouTube accounts.
4) We can’t make a four-hour podcast. Even two hours would be pushing our listeners’ patience. That means we’ll only have time to cover the 15 – 20 most interesting announcements. But know that we won’t be filtering by price. If it’s interesting to us, we’ll cover it in the podcast.
Anyway, thank you for reading this far (if you did). At this point, I’d usually write “see you in Munich in a few weeks”. But that’s not yet a given. Without a COVID case-number miracle, I’ll be staying in Berlin to shoot review videos with Olaf. If cases do tumble to low enough levels by early May, we might cross paths at the M.O.C. during the two trade days. But I won’t be covering the show as I have in previous years. That means our preview podcast will be your only chance to get some Munich High-End 2022 coverage from this publication. I look forward to hearing from you.
Liebe Grüße,
John
