How Cummins Reimagined The Industrial Trade Show Around Storytelling And Human Connection

At large industrial trade shows, the default formula is usually straightforward: pack the booth with as much machinery and hardware as possible and let the scale speak for itself. The result can often feel like a sea of metal displays competing for attention on the convention floor. For its latest appearance at CONEXPO-CON/AGG in Las Vegas, Cummins Inc. intentionally moved in the opposite direction. Instead of maximizing product density, the company reduced its equipment footprint to make room for a lounge, live conversations, and immersive storytelling experiences designed to keep people engaged long after they stepped into the booth.

Anuj Shah approached the challenge with a background that stretched far beyond traditional industrial marketing. In his former role as Director of Global Marketing Communications at Cummins Inc., Shah oversaw global communications for a $4 billion portfolio within the engine business unit and brought more than 17 years of global marketing experience to the work, including a previous leadership role at Ingram Micro Cloud. At CONEXPO-CON/AGG, he helped lead a broader rethink of how industrial brands could show up at large-scale events, shifting the focus away from pure equipment display and toward experiences built around conversation, storytelling, and human connection.

"If you're going to go to a big event like ConExpo, you want to be remembered. It should be something that not only people enjoy but that actually positions the brand at an advantage over competitors," says Shah. At a show drawing roughly 140,000 attendees and countless competing booths, Cummins intentionally resisted the industry instinct to maximize hardware visibility. Less than a third of the company’s exhibit space was dedicated to physical engine displays. The booth was divided into three distinct experiential zones that blended lounge-style environments with educational programming, giving visitors more reasons to stay, interact, and engage.

Building beyond the booth

Introducing hospitality-driven concepts like the 1919 Lounge and a TED-style speaker stage required Cummins to think beyond the traditional industrial trade show formula. Part of the motivation was practical: with only engines on display, attendees tended to browse and move on. Shah's team wanted visitors to linger, which would create more openings for personal conversations and a chance to show genuine appreciation for customer loyalty. The team approached the experience intentionally, designing the space to feel welcoming, elevated, and comfortable while still aligning with the company's professional brand standards. The lounge combined sensory details and hospitality elements more commonly associated with premium retail or live entertainment environments, helping visitors slow down and spend more time engaging with the brand. "We had really good coffee, a barista, and bartenders," Shah notes. "We included scents in the corners, jazz music, and comfy seats. These are the things anyone would like if they were going out for a night in Las Vegas."

Shah used the "Power Talks" series to rethink what educational programming could look like at an industrial trade show. Rather than building sessions around straightforward sales pitches or product specifications, the team started by identifying the bigger operational questions customers and attendees might genuinely find interesting. The goal was to shift the conversation from what Cummins sells to how the company actually operates at a global scale, giving audiences a more substantive and engaging view into the business behind the equipment. "How do we service 190 countries around the world? What does it take to have that infrastructure, versus just pointing to an uptime guarantee?" Shah asks. "Those are the things people want to learn, but they also want the other stuff that's interesting and inspiring."

The Cummins team built an integrated, city-wide campaign around the "Legendary Inside and Out" platform, using it to connect the lounge, stage programming, and product displays back to the broader brand story. Anchoring the concept in the company’s 106-year history gave the campaign internal credibility while also creating a flexible narrative that could extend well beyond the show floor itself. The messaging carried across video, print, social content, executive communications, and a CEO press conference, turning the event into a coordinated storytelling system that followed attendees throughout Las Vegas. "We wrapped the Vegas Strip. We had ads on the Bellagio, the Miracle Mile and the Paris Hotel," Shah explains. "The moment you landed in the Las Vegas airport and got your taxi, there were 10 billboards along the corridor, and each one pointed to a different way that Cummins was legendary."

Stories, strategy, and shared vision

A clearly defined creative vision also helped align Cummins’ external production and vendor partners around a much more ambitious experience than a standard trade show booth. Rather than outsourcing the entire activation to a massive agency network, Shah’s team developed the strategy and storytelling internally, giving collaborators a strong foundation to execute against. Behind the scenes, the activation came together through tight coordination across more than a dozen internal teams and outside agency partners, spanning brand, creative, product, sales, communications, and business unit leadership.

The clarity of the concept allowed production partners to push their own work further, while also reinforcing that immersive brand experiences do not always require fully outsourced creative ownership to feel premium or large-scale. "The owner of one of our key suppliers told me we had just given them a new trophy for their wall, because everyone could finally see what they are capable of doing when partnering with a company that has a vision," Shah recalls. "I had people from competitors and key customers coming up to ask if we really came up with all this. We did it all in-house."

Shah’s team viewed the event as an opportunity to strengthen long-term brand affinity just as much as to generate immediate business conversations. The broader strategy centered on creating an environment that opened the door for more organic and memorable interactions across different customer segments. Those conversations reinforced how deeply Cummins resonated with audiences far beyond direct buyers alone, spanning generations of enthusiasts, operators, and industry professionals. "A 15-year-old came up to me and was rattling off the specs of our 5.9-liter engine, which we obsoleted years ago. He knew every spec of the new 6.7 turbo diesel," Shah says. "I was so impressed I wanted to offer him a job right then and there."

Meaningful moments, massive scale

For Shah, the most effective part of the campaign was not the spectacle itself, but how intentionally every element connected back to the audience’s lived experience. The lounge, speaker sessions, hospitality touches, and city-wide storytelling all worked together to create an environment where conversations could naturally move beyond equipment specifications and into the realities of customers’ everyday lives. Trade shows, in his view, become far more valuable when they function as participatory brand ecosystems rather than static product showcases. "Every person that drives a pickup truck talks about family," Shah notes. "They could tell me about their business, the farm, or the construction that they do, but they always want to talk about their family. It's such a cool thing to get to know what those common characteristics are among the people buying your products."

Grounding the entire experience in Cummins’ long-standing brand history helped those conversations feel authentic instead of manufactured for the event. Shah believes the campaign resonated because it amplified stories and values customers already associated with the company rather than trying to invent an entirely new identity for the trade show environment. The result was a communications strategy designed less around showcasing hardware and more around creating memorable human connection at scale. "I think the reason why it was successful is because it was so true. It's truly a legendary product brand for so many reasons," Shah concludes. "I think that's where the magic happens, where you can come up with content that holds true and resonates with your customers."