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Seriously, stop with the booth babes

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Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#51

Post by nl »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #27
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…

Apart from the brain-dead flirting efforts, that heels-and-skirt-suit effect doesn't sound any different than my reaction to men in suits. If I want to find a clue, I look past the guy whose job involves showing up in a costume chosen in hopes I'm easily manipulated. But then I don't frequent trade shows, so I don't know how many nerds have enough clout to show up dressed normally but not enough to just stay home.

Look who you'd miss out on talking to:

The three-piece suit has become sort of my trademark. You don't see them much anymore. It has several benefits: You may be overdressed on some occasions, but you can manage to fit into a huge range of circumstances.

http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/vint-cerf-0...

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#52

Post by adw »

dmor wrote: post #41
prodigal_erik wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from the brain-dead flirting efforts, that heels-and-skirt-suit effect doesn't sound any different than my reaction to men in suits. If I want to find a clue, I look past the guy whose job involves showing up in a costume chosen in hopes I'm easily manipulated. But then I don't frequent trade shows, so I don't know how many nerds have enough clout to show up dressed normally but not enough to just stay home.

I wear a suit because it shows I give a damn, and occasionally to look a little older. Many people in startups wear costumes too, just a different sort for a different purpose. I realize that people in tech generally avoid "suits", but there is a time and place for dressing up and there are certain industries where you need to wear the uniform to play the game. Maybe it works to show up in flip flops as the founder o…

I like wearing suits. I even like wearing ties.

I don't mean anything by it, I just like tailored stuff. It looks good! It's highly evolved to maximise what men have got. But: if I wore one to most of my meetings, or to work, people'd ask questions or make a bunch of unfounded assumptions, so I don't.

It's a myth that technical communities don't care about clothes. They do - it's just they send a very particular set of signals and, what's more, they're the signals common to countercultures. That's fine: it's just another code, no more or less than any other. It'd be discourteous to go against it. I'm still going to be thinking wistfully of the ties in my wardrobe, though!

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#53

Post by sgentle »

mgkimsal wrote: post #19
blahedo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the OP's point---the existence of booth babes has conditioned us to be surprised when an attractive woman, or possibly any woman at all, is "intelligent, informed, competent". This follow-on effect is even worse than the already-bad first-order effect (namely objectifying the booth babe herself).

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.

I think that's the problem. It's very tempting to abstract gender out of the picture by talking about the vacuity of sales staff in general, but gender is involved. There is an established narrative of women as pretty but useless, and the women in question are being fit handily into that role.

Look at it this way: if you talk to enough sales guys who don't know anything, you'll write off sales guys as being useless. But if you talk to enough booth babes who don't know anything, you'll write off attractive women as being useless.

Booth babes aren't defined, like sales people are, by their goals or their training, but simply by being pretty women. That's the only function they serve, and consequently the level that they're judged at. That's the danger here, that it's not just a matter of salespeople getting a bad rep, but establishing an entire gender as useful only as eye candy at conferences.

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#54

Post by tintin »

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…

Aren't booth babes not just a copy of car shows? I think in car shows they are doing this because of the "when you drive (buy) this car you can get all the babes in the world".

I also don't get it in sports. Why should a striptease-looking-girl give the winner the price (motorsport for example)?

I think booth babes are an expression of "I've got nothing interesting for you so I hired some babes to get your attention".

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#55

Post by Udo »

When I walk by a booth and some stunning girl - who in real life would never even look at me - comes out and says "hiiii!" in the most fake display of flirtyness imaginable, I instantly get the feeling that I'm being conned and I'll do my best to stay away from that place.

But there is a distinct difference in having BBs do actual presentations and having them answer real customer questions. I see nothing wrong with that as long as it doesn't get tacky. As a rule of thumb, I would advise tech companies that target nerdy types like me to get rid of generic BBs but to continue using good-looking but knowledgeable women to present stuff.

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#56

Post by biot » 

  > Ask why their company wastes everyone’s time and their investors’ money using
  > people who provide no value.
There's a few statements there which aren't backed up by references. Which is cheaper: hiring extra people to staff a conference or flying out a bunch of $100/hr engineers, putting them up in hotels, and so on? I would think it's a waste of money to bring out the engineers. Not only in terms of expenses but also the opportunity cost of them not working for an entire week.

Of course, this depends on the audience. For something like CES, the average conference-goer will maybe pick up pamphlets and enter a draw. For that, hiring models who are experienced in trade shows and are comfortable interacting with people all day long are the better choice. For a conference which is far more technical and the audience will be interested in the nitty-gritty details of a technology, then only hiring models is likely a poorer choice. A hybrid approach might be worthwhile.

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#57

Post by tomjen3 »

burgerbrain wrote: post #24
dmoney wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other cultures can handle sexuality better. Which ones? And how do they do that?

In my personal experience, the Scandinavian cultures do it better by simply not making a big deal out of it. When you teach all your children from a young age that nudity is naughty and sexuality doesn't exist, you shouldn't be surprised when they grow up ill equipped to handle such things maturely.

I am from Scandinavia and that's not really true. We like naked females as much as everybody else and will do as many stupid things to get them. What we don't have is a bunch of extremely religious people with power so the contrast makes it seem more easy going.

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#58

Post by dotBen »

I think the author is doing a little bit of disservice to "marketing folk" (women AND men), who I think he is really referring to here as "booth babes".

"Booth Babes" tend to refer to models who dress provocatively purely to entice people into the booth - seen more at b2c conferences and lower-order, less sales-driven b2b conferences like game conferences and CES.

Engineers > Sales people > PR/Marketing people > Booth babes

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#59

Post by wccrawford »

count wrote: post #44
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They're not for you. They're for the huge majority of bozos, who, unlike you, are only at the conference because it's a junket and some free time away from work. Eye candy is a huge plus.

By that logic, aren't the booth babes just as pointless? If the idea is to drive sales, and those people aren't there to make purchasing decisions, then it's a lost cause.

Re: Seriously, stop with the booth babes

#60

Post by vacri »

Ihavenoname wrote: post #43
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…

Working as a male in a female dominated profession it is painfully obvious that this kind of behavior is not unique to men. I find it ironic that people want women somehow exempt from this unconscious behavior. It is not hard to spot the people male or female that dress to be taken seriously. I avoid the likely coulees sales rep irrigardless of gender and how they dress is a huge part of how I determine who needs to…

I used to work on a medical technician team of five as the only male. We had to replace one of the women who left, so put out an ad. We all went through the resumes, and there were two with the techincal skills, both female. Everyone agreed on getting in those two. There was a third candidate who didn't have the proper tech skills, but he did have 'has appeared as a model on TV on this show and that show'. He was given an interview based on this line - my colleagues wanted to see the eye-candy, even though they denied it - there were women with better skill matches than this guy (though only the initial two had the right matches out of all). This guy got dragged into a job interview solely so the women could check him out physically; he was never going to get the job.
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