‘Booth babes’ will not be seen at the RSA Conferencescheduled to be held next month, as the exhibitors have added a new clause to its rules that ban revealing clothes.
“If other convention organizers hop onto the bandwagon, it would be right in line with the positive changes we’ve seen in the Silicon Valley over the last few years,” says CNET senior editor Sharon Profis. “There’s an effort to bring more women leaders and influencers into tech, and the culture of booth babes works against that progress.”
In a detailed, impassioned TechCrunch guest editorial called “Booth Babes Don’t Convert,” experienced tech marketer Spencer Chen tackles what he calls the “stripper and steaks” mentality and lays out a sound financial argument for why it’s actually better to have charming grandmothers than “lazy” booth babes hawking the wares. In a wacky real-life experiment, he noticed that the former boosted his higher quality leads. Chen also found time and time again that booth babes actually intimidated men away — except for the “overconfident weirdos.”
This movement against using promotional models at trade shows could spell bad news for companies like the one that’s actually named Booth Babes, a website that both offers and recruits promotional models for events. Pro tip if you’re hoping to become a double-B, according to the example pictures of ladies on the site: Wear lots of frosted pink lipstick and practice staring blankly into the camera.
Agencies/Canadajournal