Events

Reddit’s CES 2024 Experience Gives Brands a Key to Context

marketingcawpuser 4 months ago 3 min read

“We wanted [attendees] to be very hands-on here because people are really vulnerable and authentic on Reddit and feel like they find a community among complete strangers. We wanted the same kind of warmness to come through in how we built this space. That’s what makes it special.”

–Emma Rathe, Head of Event Marketing, Reddit

How do you translate business messaging to a playful, children’s museum-like experience? Ask Reddit. With more than 16 billion posts and comments, it’s a unique content hub powered by conversations in active and vibrant communities, and the next frontier for brands looking to tap into the power of contextual and interest-based advertising.

“When we look into the future of advertising, customers are getting harder and harder to find in the context that’s most relevant to them,” says Emma Rathe, head of event marketing at Reddit. “More than a solution to signal loss, context and interest are key to relevance and impact in today’s privacy-first landscape.”

Cue in an orange metal key, instrumental in the brand’s “Key to Context” activation for CES 2024 at The Cosmopolitan. Last year, the brand highlighted its early adopter audiences and made a splash with its “Reddit Future Tellers” full of clairvoyance-themed activations showcasing popular memes and cultural trends. This time, it invited attendees to step into the shoes of a redditor u/RoadTripTechie as she pursued her interests and made purchasing decisions. Participants could see her Reddit journey unlocking opportunities for brands.

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To illustrate a specific purchase journey, the experience featured several vignettes that felt like a hands-on museum, and in fact, the words don’t touch were crossed out at the entrance. The first “pit stop” gave a glimpse into how u/RoadTripTechie researches her next car and plans a cross-country road trip. Turn the wheel, move the slider, and digestible, relevant info adds a new dimension of understanding. Insert the orange key, and insights about different marketing solutions implemented by actual brands put it all into context.

The next vignette explored the main character geeking out and looking for advice in tech communities, followed by a cozy room-with-a-view vignette where she trades beauty tips and tricks. Each followed the three-touchpoint scenario, bringing a sense of continuation and anticipation of the next reveal.

The first “pit stop” showed how the u/RoadTripTechie redditor researched her next car and planned a cross-country road trip.

“We wanted [attendees] to be very hands-on here because people are really vulnerable and authentic on Reddit and feel like they find a community among complete strangers,” says Rathe. “We wanted the same kind of warmness to come through in how we built this space. That’s what makes it special.”

The brand’s vibrant orange-red set the mood and made for a nice departure from the stiff black-and-white business messaging elsewhere at CES. And it wasn’t just about the color. Rathe says: “Reddit is a text-based platform, but what people are sharing gives so much color to the human expression, it matches our brand perfectly.”

With authenticity being key to Reddit, it made sense for it to be the foundation of this activation. The content in the vignettes was created by redditors and approved by them to use. The final focal point of the journey zoomed out from the u/RoadTripTechie to some 500 million redditors exploring their interests and creating a rich contextual landscape for brands, and anchored by the actual usernames of the brand’s team members. And the orange key… it became a reminder that there’s always more to be unlocked. Agency: Giant Spoon.