The Nation's Largest Auto Show Wraps Up in the Windy City
The Chicago Auto Show concluded a successful nine-day run this past weekend, boasting a 7 percent increase in attendance compared to last year. With more than 1 million square feet of exhibit space, the Chicago Auto Show is the nation’s largest auto show. The show’s media preview this year hosted 18 world premieres including the introduction of the Kia Trail’ster concept as well as important consumer vehicles such as the Acura RDX, Chevrolet Equinox, Honda Pilot and Toyota Avalon.
“With so many attendees and so much room to spread out, the Chicago Auto Show is the nation’s consumer auto show,” said John Webb, 2015 Chicago Auto Show chairman. “That was in evidence with the large number of mainstream vehicles that made their world debut here this year.”
In addition to the RDX, Equinox, Pilot and Avalon, the 2015 Chicago Auto Show also saw world introductions of the Acura MDX, Chevrolet Silverado Custom and Midnight and Colorado GearOn, Ford Police Interceptor, Hyundai Elantra GT and Veloster Rally, Kia Trail’ster concept and Rio, Nissan 370Z Roadster NISMO concept and GT-R LM NISMO race car, Ram Laramie Limited and Toyota Camry and Corolla Special Editions.
Taking advantage of the large number of attendees, the Chicago Auto Show is also a leader in technology and social media activations. The show provided free Wi-Fi to all attendees, and the official Chicago Auto Show app had more than 33,000 downloads during the run of the show – easily doubling the number of downloads from a year ago. In addition, the app incorporated cutting-edge beacon technology designed to message attendees as they approached significant vehicles or sponsor-activation areas.
The Chicago Auto Show also continued to engage with its thousands of fans across social media. The show’s #CAS15, was a top trending hashtag on Twitter during the Media Preview and directly reached 30 million people totaling 22,500 tweets. Fans could also see their tweets and Instagram posts on a social media wall, a hub where the social media team also hosted a series of Twitter chats and blogger meet-ups throughout the show.
“Our social media strategy is simple: to encourage our thousands of fans and attendees to share their personal experiences of the nation’s largest auto show through comments, pictures and videos,” said Dave Sloan, Chicago Auto Show general manager. “The auto show is a perfect blend of old-school crowdsourcing combined with today’s technologies to exponentially increase the marketing reach of the show.”
Planning is already underway for the 108th Chicago Auto Show. The 2016 Chicago Auto Show will open to the public on Feb. 13 and run through Feb. 21. The media preview will be Feb. 11-12, 2016, and First Look for Charity will be Feb. 12, 2016.
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