Trade Show Guru

Some of my regular readers may have noticed that I’ve had a bit of a problem with my blogging regularity lately (translation – I haven’t posted in a while… a long while). No, I didn’t venture to the end of the world and fall off, nor was I abducted by trade show zombies. The Trade Show Guru blog isn’t obsolete… at least not yet. I’ve just been busy with other things – mainly work, but also spending time with my family over the holidays and watching an occasional movie (though I haven’t seen Avatar lately – I’m not that wealthy, at least not yet). But I know I need to make a blog post every now and then to keep this blog at least on life support, so what better topic than tradeshow booth babes.

I know some readers will click through to this post just to see the pictures… and you’re expecting to see barely dressed, sexy women. Well, I don’t want to disappoint, so here is one…

[hot hooters girl]And I don’t want to descriminate against my female readers, so here’s a male “booth babe”…

[hot guy showing off his ads]

OK, now that the obligatory eye-candy “tradeshow booth babe” pictures are out of the way, let me get to the point.

Tradeshow booth babes are a bad idea.

I’m familiar with the saying “sex sells” and maybe if you’re selling Miami-Vice-style cigarette jet boats to middle aged men or cheap beer to college kids, then having a skimpily clad blonde bimbo isn’t an entirely bad idea. But for most tradeshow exhibitors, booth babes are a bad idea. There are much better ways to attract qualified prospects to your tradeshow booth (even handing out trade show giveaways pens is a better idea than having a booth babe).

Having booth babes at your trade show booth will probably draw a crowd… but it will be a crowd of people clogging up your tradeshow booth wanting to see the pretty girl and probably having absolutely no interest in your product, service, or company. And for those people who are interested in your company, they will probably wonder if your product is any good at all if you have to resort to booth babes to try to sell it.

So let your competitors employ the booth babes at their trade show booths. Trust me and make your trade show booth a “booth-babe-free-zone”. Don’t stress if you only have a small portable table top display for your booth. If you’re worried about the size of your display, don’t compensate by using a booth babe. It won’t work (even if you have her dancing on the table and handing out shots ala the movie Coyote Ugly). If you are thinking about hiring a booth babe, look at this picture…

[pucker face image]

This is what a trade show booth babe will most likely do for your trade show marketing efforts, and is the mental image you should get if you seriously a booth babe for your own trade show booth… To repeat, tradeshow booth babes are a bad idea!

But just in case you didn’t get my point, let me show you another mental image to store away in the back of your head in the event you are ever, ever tempted to go the route of hiring a tradeshow booth babe to hawk your tradeshow wares…

[fat ugly guys in speedos image]

Don’t do it. While “tradeshow booth babes” may be ok for a blog post, they are not ok for your tradeshow booth.

Care to disagree?