http://englishrussia.com/?p=2205#more-2205

Just sit in a clinic waiting room waiting your turn. The fat ones with goiters are the patients. The Pharma Reps stick out like sore thumbs.

I haven’t seen any “minimally dressed” models at an auto show in years.

The company that retains the intelligent booth babes that can speak in complete sentences and pull in the right company execs to answer questions — they are the big winners.

To be fair, if Lambo is going to sell cars by “sexyness”, they should provide beefcake as well as cheesecake.

On other hand, I’ve absolutely no objection to woman representing show cars in an intelligent manner. I’ve found Subaru seems to do this better than most vendors.

Not a physician but have many friends who are and have met a couple of female pharma reps. Going by a doctor’s office if you see a good looking woman parking and then retrieving something from the trunk, chances are good she’s a pharma rep.

BTW, was at the plumber today and he did the old “turn your head and cough” routine. Know why they have you turn your head? It has nothing to do with hernias, the docs just don’t like getting coughed upon. What’s more undignified, a women getting into the stirrups (cue: Back In The Saddle Again), or a guy having to bend over and lean on his elbows?

RS are you a physician? I worked in pharma sales many years ago and being hot was practically a prerequisite for the females reps. One company in particular Nordic(now since absorbed into bigger firms) had the most remarkable collection of women you’d ever encounter in one place at one time.

And I agree, women now definitely want it both ways and it’s really quite aggravating.

Anyways, I think that there are some companies that should go balls out and go to the extreme. I mean, seriously, doesn’t a Viper stand practically beg for booth babes?

As far as I could tell, there were no shrimp, large or small, at any of the displays at this year’s NAIAS (to be consistent, I also call the Toronto show the CIAS). I keep kosher so it’s possible that I missed the shellfish, but I think I would have noticed. The domestics really cut back. Ford had some booze upstairs, and if you looked here and there you could find some beer and some food, but it was the Germans who acted as though nothing was different – though VW did forego their usual Lufthansa catering crew from Munich. The domestics were clearly trying to appear to be frugal in both how they feted the journalists and how they ran their product introductions. Certainly on the show floor the domestics had little more than bottled water and soft drinks.

As far as booth babes are concerned, I didn’t see any working the GM stand, though that may change during the Industry preview and the public days. Ford had some nice looking women, but about the same number of male models. They were, as far as I could tell, “product specialists”, not just eye candy. Chrysler didn’t have anyone of that sort at their display. I think GM has been cutting back on the eye candy since Cadillac brought in some models who were rather immodestly dressed about 4 or 5 years ago and they got some negative feedback. In terms of straight up models, this year it was Audi and Lamborghini – Lamborghini put on a fashion show the second day of the preview. BMW also hires a lot of good looking women.

Feminine pulchritude at the NAIAS is more the province of the foreign manufacturers than the domestics. Of course, Europe has more nudity in commercials and advertisements too. The best looking woman at this year’s show, an Audi model (you can see her in the pic Jalopnik published of the R8), used to work at Nissan as a product specialist. Nissan has always hired some of the best looking women to work the show. You can almost get an idea of the tastes of whoever does the hiring for each manufacturer. Bentley likes blondes. BMW likes cleavage. Lamborghini likes women that are model attractive but not very pretty to my tastes. Someone at Nissan likes redheads.

I’m no more offended by booth babes than I am by the fact that pharma sales reps tend to be attractive, both male and female. The same goes for marketing types. I’ve long said that besides the models there are tons of pretty women at the auto shows. Marketing people are good looking, as Phil said, and there’s also on air talent from all the tv stations. The Spanish language stations and networks all seem to have at least one hot woman for on-camera work.

Frankly, women today want to have it both ways. They want to be feminists while retaining the option of using their sex appeal to get ahead. The vast majority of women are perfectly willing to use their feminine wiles to get their way, whether it’s flirting with a traffic cop or putting on a “don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies” routine to get a man to do something for them. They want men to hold doors open for them, while reserving the right to call that a sexist practice.

Like Phil said, the women who work the auto show booths aren’t slaves. They chose this line of work, they are very well compensated, and they make valuable business connections with some fairly powerful people. According to one of the models I spoke with, she got paid more to just stand there than she did when working an information booth.

So, I haven’t seen anyone hire booth beef in particular, but similar manipulations are played on the fairer sex. Just with a smaller budget.

…The “sexual objectification” of women was roundly, stridently and publicly denounced. The practice was defeated. Depicting women as mindless eye candy more-or-less whoring for a product joined racial stereotyping as one of those things you just don’t do….

…not even. That battle turned out to be inconsequential. Today, most women don’t agree with it and their disagreement is increasingly vehement. Women in their 20s today almost completely reject the artificial denial of sex appeal advocated by their feminist forebearers, and yet they are emphatically feminist. The artifice of denying the advantages of beauty, presence and communication in commercial life barely disturbed a continuing elemental truth: in social selling, attractive women are devastatingly effective.

Build a marketing organization and you’re going to employ women for 70% of your staff needs. Why? Because communications skills and social affinity are areas of high incidence of competence in the female population. Many sharp women with those skills also happen to be attractive as well as professionally disciplined. Every industry has gone through short periods of political correctness, artificially denying commerce of its rightful application of feminine charm to public commerce, and the results always come back the same. Even the women working in marketing think it’s stupid not to have a few booth babes around a trade show exhibit, regardless of a show’s attendee composition. Some female employees even put themselves out front, unasked, by dressing up more than required.

The “booth babe” has evolved from decades past. Go to SEMA or NAMM, where the outfits are more outlandish and the projected eroticism is willful, and even there the girls have made much more effort to communicate real information than not many years ago. Go to a more mainstream show with global participants and sure, the Italians, the French and the Japanese put a more assertive spin on their feminine presence, but for the most part mainstream shows are lubricated by attractive women dressed well within the tastes for reveal that mainstream culture accepts in the show location. I haven’t been to the Detroit show, but I haven’t seen any marketing models at the L.A. or other auto shows that were out of culturally-accepted bounds for dress, reveal, behavior or suggestion.

Moreover, the women in question, when questioned, invariably welcome the work. The competition to get hired is tough, and there is a certain personality type that endures the physical demand of being on one’s feet, feigning cheer and tolerance for a long day in order to be socially out front, projecting, performing. This is not ever going to go away.

In the shows I go to, it’s plainly evident that the “booth babes” are social ice-breakers. Far from intimidation, they draw people in, improve engagement with prospective customers and make it easier for product and sales personnel to engage the group around them. The “booth babes” also keep audiences longer during their microphone narratives, than engineers or most sales employees would. It’s a reality all over the world that attractive women command attention and create a context for assimilation of messaging, brand attributes and even product features. And it will remain so.

My own experiences in consumer electronics, software and media have proven time and again that eschewing the practice of putting the most attractive women on the front line of social engagement and messaging in group commerce only penalized everyone who would have been behind them, including the female employees otherwise working hard for the same objectives when a more “politically correct” tack was taken.

There are boundaries of taste to be determined and observed, and they inevitably drift with the prevailing social context. But overall, well-dressed, attractive women on the front lines of social selling are *an* indicator that marketing is doing its job and correctly managing the the receptivity of their intended audience. In other words, “booth babe” is today a professional function. If you don’t think so, just you try getting chosen for the gig.

Phil

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWAKtYGJZSM

I respectfully disagree Robert. People are mammals. They, and every other genera, are drawn to members of the opposite sex by appearance. If having someone attractive at a booth catches people’s attention, so be it. The girls aren’t there to provide sexual favours are any gratification other than visual (and may olfactory and aural…that’s A-U-R-A-L). The girls get some cash, the guys see some pretty girls…big deal. Someone has to hand out the flyers, they may as well be pretty. If you want to be fair, hire some good looking guys too, I am always available.

Only really talked to a good Mini guy. Sales staff from Peabody. He added lots of value for that 20 minute talk.

The women, not being car people, what good are they at a car show if you are supposed to have to talk to them?

Well most of the guys were not what I wanted to talk to, from the few seconds I did. Pontiac sales. Ouch.

Keep the bling.

PS. the VW Passat CC, which is beautiful, had dead battery with a fumbled connection to 120v supply underneath. No, I cant operate power seat. HAHAHAHAHA.

You need to be the Chairman Chairperson of the Board here and make the final comment. It has been a pretty rollicking discussion.

Good stuff!

RD

AND – a – it looks like the “Buick Tagline” Post has garnered more comments than has this Booth Babes post, which means TTAC is still a car site.

Prof thought plan was a B paper given my documentation skills but the concept was worth asking me if I was serious, he would help arrange financing and be in on it.