Blue Marble Project

This article was originally posted at our sister site: the School blog

This post is part of a series - if you haven’t already, read part 1 and part 2 first.

After the huge PR response to our launch of the Whirlpool 3D model collection in September ‘06, the question was what to do next?  Major trade shows are an excellent time to launch products and the International Builder Show is the biggest for product manufacturers.  But I didn’t think home builders were quite ready for SketchUp and Google 3D Warehouse.
Google told me their first big show of 2007 would be Macworld.  They claim to like this show because SketchUp is the only 3D modeling software that works on a Mac, so no competitors show up.  I think the attraction is the Buena Vista Café, birthplace of Irish Coffee in America.  The Google folks were there several nights, just to soak up the history I’m sure.
At about this time I was thinking about video podcasting, convinced that Whirlpool’s online continuing education program needed a rich media approach as a competitive differentiator to the PowerPoint presentations that are the industry standard.  But I didn’t know enough about the technology and the players to get started.  Since MacWorld had several presenters speaking on this topic, it seemed like the place to be.

So my team hunkered down (easy to do in Michigan in December) and focused on creating the KitchenAid brand 3D model collection.  By January we had virtual appliances ready for Macworld.  Certain that an appliance manufacturer had never attended Macworld and feeling intimidated about “talking tech”, I decided to bring my son, Duncan, a photographer and avid Mac user, to translate.  Good thing I did.  Speaking the lexicon at Macworld is an immersion experience… like asking for directions in a foreign country.

The upshot?  We launched a virtual collection of KitchenAid appliances in the Google SketchUp booth at Macworld, the press picked up the PR story and I learned a great deal about video podcasting.  Maybe some learnings for reaching builders too, but that’s for next time.