Seriously, stop with the booth babes • Hacker News Board

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#31

Post by d5tryr » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 3:56 AM UTC

corin_ wrote: post #14

My experience lies in consumer events, and there are two simple reasons why booth babes are used. 1.) Visitors like them. 2.) Exhibitors themselves like them. And reason 2 is the biggest. While number 1 would be enough to justify it in either case, most people base it purely on "hey, I love seeing booth babes, clearly they're a good idea". And it's hard to argue with the success they have.

You're forgetting 3.)

Both these groups of people are happy to be, and be perceived as, creepy.

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#32

Post by MostAwesomeDude » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 3:59 AM UTC

matusz13 wrote: post #18

MostAwesomeDude wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I will remember your product. I will remember that you had a pair of very polite models wearing baby-doll tees with your logos on them, and that they were completely clueless about your product. I will never buy your product and actively recommend against it. I remember all the booth babes I saw at OSCON and LinuxCon this year, and I will not forget.

Did you all shun Apple when Foxconn employees started jumping to their deaths? I'm guessing not. Is it possible that you'd be letting your bias get in the way of your business sense? What if those products could have significantly helped your business?

Actually, my boycott of Apple started a long time ago, during the iPodLinux days, when Apple C&D'd people decrypting the fifth-generation iPod firmware.

Business should not preempt ethics.

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#33

Post by lawnchair_larry » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 4:03 AM UTC

burgerbrain wrote: post #25

matusz13 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you all shun Apple when Foxconn employees started jumping to their deaths? I'm guessing not. Is it possible that you'd be letting your bias get in the way of your business sense? What if those products could have significantly helped your business?

Seriously, lets get some perspective. If women with tight clothing are the best reason you can think of to not purchase a product, that is a pretty damned good endorsement of that product... Your objectivity is compromised if that is how you make your decisions.

Seriously, lets get some perspective.

If women with tight clothing are the best way you can think of to sell your product, that's pretty telling of the technical merits of your product. It's safe to assume you've given up at that point, and you don't have anything else worthwhile to see.

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#34

Post by rdl » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 4:03 AM UTC

dmor wrote: post #23

mgkimsal wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take gender out of it, I'm surprised when anyone who is related to a 'sales' dept at a conference booth is "intelligent, informed, competent". It's better at tech conferences, but still not a 100% given.

That's really quite sad when you think of it. Maybe my experience is some crazy outlier, but the sales people I've worked with both in shipping and in tech have been some of the smartest people I've known. Maybe these companies are sending the bottom of the barrel to conferences... I'm taking a note not to do that with my company.

I've found sales engineers to be among the smartest people in most (enterprise) companies -- definitely smarter than the dedicated salespeople and absolutely smarter than the product engineers. They're basically the equivalent of the "rainmakers" in professional services; i.e. the people you bring in to convince the client that you're brilliant, but who don't actually work on your account once you're signed.

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#35

Post by burgerbrain » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 4:05 AM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #33

burgerbrain wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, lets get some perspective. If women with tight clothing are the best reason you can think of to not purchase a product, that is a pretty damned good endorsement of that product... Your objectivity is compromised if that is how you make your decisions.

Seriously, lets get some perspective. If women with tight clothing are the best way you can think of to sell your product, that's pretty telling of the technical merits of your product. It's safe to assume you've given up at that point, and you don't have anything else worthwhile to see.

Women in tight clothing and selling your product based on it's merits are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the two of them have been shown to make quite a powerful couple.

If you are making your purchasing decisions based on the presence of women in tight clothing instead of the absence of technical merits, you are compromised. You should be able to judge the technical merits while ignoring the "booth babes", otherwise you're not much better than people who only purchase products because of them.

If no technical merits are present, then you by certainly have a far better reason to not purchase a product than just "they had women in tight clothing".

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#36

Post by lawnchair_larry » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 4:12 AM UTC

dmor wrote: post #20

blahedo wrote: post #15

I'm getting the impression from reading the other comments that most of the commenters just skimmed the article (or perhaps didn't read it at all, and drew assumptions from the title). If you need a tl;dr, or if you read it quickly, this is the most important line in the post: > What you end up with is the situation where you, as a conference goer, walk up to a booth and, because you’re no stranger to how this works,…

Thanks for making the main point clear, I want to chime in here as a woman and someone who has represented my company from very early on at trade shows (and does to this day). In the telecom industry in particular these booth babes run rampant, they literally provide you with a form when you register to exhibit asking if you want to hire models. At one event a couple years ago, a guy came over to talk with our CTO (a…

It's hard to believe that booth babes actually work in sales. I assume everyone knows that they are not going to get her number. She can't answer any questions obviously. Am I in the minority for feeling that hired fake flirty girls are insulting my intelligence with such a shallow attempt to manipulate me?

This actually made me wonder if they occasionally do get picked up. There must be some reason that guys think talking to them is not a waste of time...

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#37

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 4:13 AM UTC

sunahsuh wrote: post #30

matusz13 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you all shun Apple when Foxconn employees started jumping to their deaths? I'm guessing not. Is it possible that you'd be letting your bias get in the way of your business sense? What if those products could have significantly helped your business?

Yes. Because it's not called bias, it's called ethics and they help me sleep at night. And while the Apple issue was not applicable to me (I can't remember the last dollar I spent on an Apple product), I do, for instance, make a conscious effort to try and buy electronics that are made with conflict-free coltan (which is difficult due to the paucity of information on the subject). I find your nonchalant suggestion se…

[deleted]

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#38

Post by tmeasday » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 4:25 AM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #36

dmor wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for making the main point clear, I want to chime in here as a woman and someone who has represented my company from very early on at trade shows (and does to this day). In the telecom industry in particular these booth babes run rampant, they literally provide you with a form when you register to exhibit asking if you want to hire models. At one event a couple years ago, a guy came over to talk with our CTO (a…

It's hard to believe that booth babes actually work in sales. I assume everyone knows that they are not going to get her number. She can't answer any questions obviously. Am I in the minority for feeling that hired fake flirty girls are insulting my intelligence with such a shallow attempt to manipulate me? This actually made me wonder if they occasionally do get picked up. There must be some reason that guys think t…

You don't seriously think the male unconscious mind is that rational do you?

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#39

Post by lawnchair_larry » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 4:25 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #37

sunahsuh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Because it's not called bias, it's called ethics and they help me sleep at night. And while the Apple issue was not applicable to me (I can't remember the last dollar I spent on an Apple product), I do, for instance, make a conscious effort to try and buy electronics that are made with conflict-free coltan (which is difficult due to the paucity of information on the subject). I find your nonchalant suggestion se…

[deleted]

That was clearly not her argument. The tangent has nothing to do with modeling specifically. You implied that choosing social responsibility over maximizing the business is a mistake, when in fact, it is not.

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#40

Post by drivebyacct2 » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 4:30 AM UTC

'Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. Please try your request again later. Why did this happen?'

I got this earlier when I tried to open several cached links at once. An hour or two later and I'm still getting it for no reason. Wireshark confirms and I have a public IP address.