Men. We’re shallow creatures you know (cue comments from everyone about my obsession with heels). Geeks? Well we like toys, useless things like frisbees, or shirts branded with some software company logo, or, well, booth bunnies.
Baskow & Associates, a local special-events and talent agency, has ridden the Comdex gravy train for 10 years. Owner Jaki Baskow has set up meetings and mounted booth shows for such giants as Lucent Technologies, Digital Equipment, and Texas Instruments. And she typically supplies up to 90 models — known in trade-show vernacular as ”booth bunnies" — to Comdex exhibitors, who pay up to $ 350 a day for top models.
—Andy Reinhardt, "Highbrows and Low-Rollers," Business Week, November 9, 1998
On Sunday the Inquirer posted a couple of articles about a trade show in Buenos Aires, detailing the women "manning" the stands. Now I could be politically correct here and complain about how this objectifies women, and partly I do believe that. Partly pretty girls confuse the heck out of me and will scare quite a few geeks off. Annoyingly of course it’s very rare that they will know anything about the product they’re marketing and instead serve to hide/protect the sales staff from difficult questions. However it’s still good marketing (except for instances like this, where the bunny [and err, she apparently is a playboy bunny] can’t spell USB); the majority of attendees who will be men will be attracted to the girls and thus will be drawn towards the stands. It’s the same with car marketing; or the marketing for Lynx/Axe body sprays, the fact of the matter is sex sells to men and at trade shows like this the majority of attendees will be men, so marketing will target them. It makes business sense, do you worry about losing one sale through your behaviour when you can create five others?
If men are used as marketing tools on stands it’s usually for humour; dressed up as a superhero, or in Bermuda shorts; there’s certainly no equivalent buff muscular man on a trade stand showing off his six pack.
So what can be done? It’s a vicious circle; until more women attend the shows, with purchasing power, marketing simply says sell to the majority. Until this sort of objectification stops women aren’t going to attend the shows or want to become involved. You know that the marketing departments or companies aren’t going to change their approach so the only way I see to change it is for the booth bunnies to be ignored (or better yet sympathy expressed loudly), displeasure expressed to the companies that use them and for you, geek girls, to attend trade shows despite the appearance of shallow marketing gestures. (But don’t be surprised if you’re mistaken for a marketing girl; Sarah certainly has been.)
