Today’s New York Times Technology section leads with the cost-benefit to firms attending the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, which runs this week in Las Vegas. The pros and cons are laid out, and with the powersports industry’s main events just a few weeks away (V-Twin in Cincinnati, Dealer Expo in Indianapolis) the timing for an overview couldn’t be better.

This piece is on the heels of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, where manufacturers annually roll the dice on billions of dollars of market share, and parallel to MacWorld in San Francisco, where Apple’s rumored to introduce the long anticipated iPhone – a potential seismic event in the entirety of digital interconnectivity.

Interesting from the marketing perspective is how much more willing some industry segments are to acknowledge the role exhibit and collateral design plays in marketing to the audience in shows like CES, NAIAS and SEMA, to name a few. As competition and economics get tougher, those who grab and hold the high ground will understand the relationship of perception to performance, whether in the dealers mind or the consumers.