Caterpillar’s story at Bauma, which takes place every three years at the Messe München in Munich, is primarily about scale. At this trade show for construction, building and mining machines, recently held April 7-13, the brand’s nearly 1 million square feet of booth space housed 51 larger-than-life pieces of engineering equipment available to order right there on the show floor. But behind and underneath this massive presence is an innovation story several years in the making that this year the brand told through interactive tech and one heck of a centennial celebration.
To set the scene before we dive in: Bauma Munich 2025 welcomed 600,000 attendees from more than 200 countries, and featured 3,600 exhibitors. The show itself encompasses more than 2 million square feet. And Caterpillar, which holds the largest swath of real estate there, decided on a fresh floor plan that had all trails leading to a central experience point.
It’s a unique challenge for a manufacturer like Caterpillar to provide updates and ensure new messaging breaks through when the physical product commands all the attention on the show floor—literally towering over attendees. Here, we explore what we loved about the solves for this within the booth’s Performance Center space. (Partners: Øuterkind; Atelier Seitz)
High-impact, AI-driven Storytelling
A massive, cinematic theater screen that rolled a five-minute film for Caterpillar’s 100th Year Celebration stretched high above the machines to create a main focal point. The set, located in the booth’s OnShow zone, featured holo mesh, a 3D reflective surface, in front of the massive LED screen creating a holographic view of elements of the content for the audience.
The story walked attendees through the birth of Cat—when founder Benjamin Holt’s tractor got stuck in mud and he envisioned tracks around the wheels to propel it forward—to Cat machines used in the construction and expansion of the Panama Canal. The team generated much of the historical video content using AI with photographs of big moments run through a language learning model to recreate them as moving scenes.
A massive countdown clock display with changing lighting patterns helped grab the attention of passersby and in-booth attendees for viewings of the centennial celebration film on the hour.
Organic Ingredients with the Tech
To compete with a force of nature like a piece of Cat equipment, it helps to get it right with the details as Caterpillar did for an activation showcasing its Cat Grade technology. Already a difficult tech to convey in the show environment (think: “blade precision,” “steering control”), the brand needed to explain it without actually digging, so the team placed a static machine with a tilt rotator bucket that looked as if it was excavating a trench. An LED grid projected onto the surface showed the pattern an operator sees during a dig enhanced by this innovation. What made it extra impactful: the fact the dirt in the static display was brought in from the actual mine site of a Caterpillar customer…
Live Demos and Simulators
… And that customer happened to be at the center of a live demo of Cat Command, Live Remote Operation, which allows a machine operator to connect to a machine around the globe. In the past, Cat Command has largely conducted demonstrations where the machines used are housed at internally owned and operated sites, according to the team. At Bauma, the brand invited in a real customer and allowed the individual to continue working their job remotely from the show floor. The brand hosted four of these live demo sessions a day, each focused on a separate competitive advantage or attribute of the technology.
LED Interactives
A programmable LED floor helped bring the Caterpillar D8 machine’s grade capabilities to life in a more immersive way (as Christian Gani, partner at agency Øuterkind, describes, “It’s one thing to see the machine up close; it’s another to explain just how dynamic it is when operating). The floor simulated motion and terrain changes and illustrated how the technology performs across varying grades. Attendees could then dive deeper at nearby information hubs.
Over in the Motion Inhibit zone, the team activated a sensory experience using a weight-sensitive LED floor that simulated a machine reversing toward the attendees to demonstrate Caterpillar safety technology designed to help operators work with greater awareness and control. As participants moved closer to the rear of the machine, red squares tracked their steps—mirroring the operator’s perspective. Once they moved near the machine, the floor movement “halted” and Motion Inhibit warnings appeared, simulating the system’s real-world response.
‘Active’ Content
Like the OnShow experience, and the activations throughout the Performance Center, the brand created “easy-to-understand, accessible content modules,” Gani describes, like around autonomous hauling innovations that leveraged real footage and insights on loop from an active deployment site. Just enough to break through to attendees without distracting them from their primary mission at Bauma: to celebrate and invest in big machines.
Photo Credit: Julian Huke/Caterpillar
