When Dilbert and his peers poke fun at marketing trade-show tactics they’re often referring to the use of “booth babes.” Now, in recent articles by Don Tennant (Editor’s Note - COMPUTERWORLD) he first expressed his offense (“Using Women” – November 5th) at Vanco, a U.K. networking service provider using scantily clad “ring girls” in its boxing-themed display at the opening reception of the Gartner Symposium in Orlando last month. In his next column (“Getting Old, Indeed” – November 12th) he reported that his opinion was apparently off the mark as the majority of readers who responded to his column had no problem with Vanco’s use of scantily clad women. In fact, he wrote, “I got an earful from readers who faulted me for making a big deal about it and taking political correctness to an extreme.”
Tennant goes on to write “Vanco used the women to attract the crowd’s attention to its booth. And the mind-set behind the planning and execution of that strategy was that the target crowd would be attracted by provocatively dressed women. The targets were males.”
The article quotes Vanco representatives as saying they “used an Orlando based events agency to deliver the boxing setup, and relied on the agency to provide what would be appropriate for a U.S. market.”
I’m interested in this audience’s reaction. As a marketing professional do you consider “booth babes” appropriate for trade-show / conference events? I'll have to admit that maybe I'm getting old too because I shared Don's concern with the practice.
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