InfoComm sheds its skin. AVIXA is born

On Wednesday, 13 September, InfoComm announced that they were changing their name to AVIXA, a decision accompanied by a total rebranding and a renewed strategy
An important announcement (both for the association itself, naturally, and as a signal of the market’s change) which took place before an audience of 20 journalists from the five continents – and we were there among them – who were invited to InfoComm’s (or rather, AVIXA’s, now) headquarters in Fairfax, just a few kilometers away from Washington, DC.
David Labuskes, Executive Director and CEO, and Dan Goldstein, Senior VP of Marketing and Communication succeeded one another during the press conference, explaining the nature and reasons for this true shedding of skin. The reflection is based on the evolution of our market, which has become less and less connected to single products and technologies and instead to the idea of a complete solution and the value of the experience derived from this solution. “If we believe that the experience is of value for the market’s evolution, then we must help our associates to create these experiences…” said David Labuskes. Another important issue was the data inferred from the most recent edition of the InfoComm fair in Orlando last June, which saw a 20% increase in end users compared with a 15% increase in overall attendance. With this change, AVIXA – which unites the initials AV with the “integrated experience” concept and the final “A” standing for “association,” thus reaffirming its mission as an aggregator – intends to give a voice to an evolving market that needs new instruments. In practical terms, the changes will be better seen over the next few weeks and probably during ISE. In the meantime, the new logo and the four objectives that the new name summarizes were presented: realign content and programs (associative and training), increase sector awareness, reinvent the association model and the identity of the brand, and improve Market Intelligence. Worth noting is that the sector fairs organized by AVIXA will retain the name InfoComm, both for practical reasons (the difficulty of communicating a name change to users) and theoretical ones (that is, likely disassociating the identity of the association and the fairs, leaving the first more freedom on the training end and for activities beyond the fairs, too).
After the press conference, two Q&A sessions were held with several “Members” of the newly-born AVIXA; there were many questions, from practical ones (What do InfoComm associates have to do to move over to AVIXA? Answer: the transfer is automatic) to philosophical ones (Why not put AVIXA and InfoComm side by side? Answer: Because the market is a unified market even with professional end users). But Labuskes was the one who offered the most extensive answer to all of the questions: AVIXA wants to communicate the possibility of AV and the fantastic experience connected to these technologies in an innovative manner that distributes value to the market and the association. However, the association will not forget its 80 years of history, nor its unifying mission, even if the group it speaks for is a different group today.
www.avixa.org 
www.infocomm.org