Munich 2018

[David A]

Gosh - I don't read DC for a week and on my return I go first to the Munich thread and find 32 recent posts with only 8 having any "Munich" content.

The rest are non-Munich and equally divided between a positive, a neutral and a negative stance on Devialet, with one of the latter posts filling two computer screen lengths.

Give the Devialet guys a chance! A new CEO will have lots to do if views held by posters on this chat are indicative of the extent of failings in the past. Old expected behaviours which have been trickled down from leadership to staff in the last two or three years cannot be reversed immediately.

At least I am enlightened to learn that I am probably deemed to be part of the "Purple Circle" (post 174) - whereas were I part of the "Posters Cross", to the extent some are on here, I would just sell my stuff and get something else.

Actually "the rest" as you called them can be seen as discussion of what Devialet's chosen form of presence at Munich actually meant in terms of their more recent forms and level of communication with owners.  Note that Devialet's presence wasn't actually at the show itself so were the posts about it actually on topic in a thread started with a post about the show?

What happened with Devialet at Munich this year?

- They did something, they came to Munich, they didn't have a presence at the show, they organised a PR presentation for a select group of owners, and they have since failed to communicate anything of what they showed in their presentation to the rest of their customers. I won't fault them for their absence at the show itself. That decision was almost certainly taken well before the new CEO came on board and he came on board only a couple of months before the show, probably too late to really organise a good presence at the show itself. I do think sending some people to Munich over the period of the show was a good move, probably the best move that could have been made in the time the new CEO had available if he thought the decision not to have a presence at the show was wrong.

- They wanted to communicate something. That probably was partly a commitment to the Expert platform and partly a commitment to improved communication with owners. As a demonstration of a commitment to the platform, I think it worked. As a commitment to improved communication with owners I think it failed because it ignored the majority of owners. They obviously used something like a PowerPoint presentation so it would be easy for them to use the slides from the presentation with some added text and post it on their website for all owners to see. That would show a commitment to improved communication.

I'm glad they were there and did something, and those of us on this forum who didn't go to Munich and attend the presentation have benefited from their presence there because of the work that Guillaume, you, and other attendees put into telling us about it but we are a minority of owners and when you consider that, this was not a well chosen PR initiative. It could have been if they had made the content of their presentation available to all owners but they have not chosen to do that, and that's what makes it a poorly chosen PR initiative.

Take the above as a comment on Munich, Devialet's chosen form of attendance, and the good and bad of that attendance. There was good and bad involved.. They deserve credit for the good and an objective assessment of the bad, which is what I've tried to give. Since they decided to communicate with forum members through Guillaume and Guillaume chose to communicate with us through this thread which he actually started before Devialet approached him rather than starting a new thread specifically related to their Munich presentation, then I do think that communication from forum members on what transpired at Munich and our reactions to it actually is on topic in this thread. 

You said things are changing. I think it's too early to tell but there are some hopeful signs. Munich was one of them.