[mnw.pm] Booth Babe rant

[Christine Wanta]

I'm not a marketing major or in sales, however, I've been involved in
decisions about how to spend booth $'s as well as spending about 20 years in
the IT field in many roles. 

I wasn't able to attend YAPC so I do not know what we are defining as a
booth babe (I was at a Solaris class I think ;-)

Also, I'm not sure I know what the advocacy at perl.org is for but if its the
promotion of perl at all then this whole tangent should be considered there
as well.

Some stats that are being mistated or not considered in this thread is that
women comprise about 51% of the population, about 25% of all bachelor
degrees being issued in the computer and information technology programs are
to women (based on early 90's stats) and that women comprise about 20% of
the IT workforce.

Men still dominate this field as they do most, but the demographics are
changing. There are concerns on how to make entry into the sciences less
gender-oriented as most programs currently are and many groups are working
on this not just for the IT field.

My personal observance is that those numbers do not realistically reflect
the number of women in this field. In most of the larger firms that I've
worked at or consulted at the numbers were closer to 30% of the workforce.

I've seen a growth spurt in the last 5 years of women attending shows,
particularly women who make decisions in purchasing, etc. The shows tended
to be more an annoyance because they were so male-oriented.

So if you are the slightest bit interested in promoting Perl to the IT field
professionals, you may want to  see how to draw more of this potential
growth market and pay attention to what is found offensive by possibly 30%
of your potential market (more since many men find this form of marketing
offensive as well) 

Couple of other things...

Creating a negative image at any show does nothing to help promote Perl. The
promotion of Perl and its implementation in the professional field by IT
professionals as well as the distribution of information related to Perl and
the IT industry is, I believe, the reason for this conventions.

So what was the goal of the booths that had eye-candy as its drawing
mechanism? To sell a product to a certain demographical base? promote the
use of a product by IT professionals?

If the goals was to draw the two demo targets that the "booth babe"
addresses, namely, males under 25 or the under $50,000 income bracket then
the marketing strategy probably worked. In general, this ploy works well in
small appliances and distributor shows, car and truck shows oriented to
these target markets, beer markets, etc. Sex only sells if your demo target
is susceptible to that type of ploy.

If you think the majority of Perl users or IT professionals are males under
25 and under $50,000 in income, I'd suggest you fire your demo research
company. Also, those users that fit into that category have very little to
do with determining if Perl is used in most companies.

Rarely do members of these groups have any real purchasing power in the IT
field.

Since generally IT booths are looking to draw those with purchasing power
and decision-making capabilities, anyone who decided on 'booth babes' may
have failed to understand their demographic targets. 

Unfortunately its not unusual to see this lack of understanding and misuse
of standard marketing tools and applications at developing shows and trade
shows for new markets. Bad marketing is bad business.

The next time you attend a car, boat, truck show, etc., you may notice that
the old "booth babes" are fewer and far between. You will see it at the car
wax booth, but more subtle applications at a dealer (unless the target
market is 23-25, $35-50,000 income base ;-)

The decision-makers and purchasing powers (hopefully your attendees) are
more persuadable when bombarded by images that project a positive comfort
zone  for conducting business...this doesn't mean eliminate the sex factor,
simply polish it and make it less confrontational or embarrassingly obvious.
Don't confuse show strategies with sales strategies, its two different
forums with different goals.

You will find that smart marketers are staffing booths (industry
independently) with positive, often good-looking or at a minimum
well-groomed, reasonably knowledegable sales types. That's because the
primary goal is to motivate or initiate sales. Please don't misunderstand my
feelings on this, I do not hesitate to incorporate the male/female
flirtation factor to promote goals but there is a tasteful limit that booth
babes goes beyond.

Marketing statistics are finding that most IT shows attendees want (in this
order ;-) useful information, good giveaways and food. Now free peek-shows
may be considered a 'giveaway' but most the geeks I know would (eventually
;-) define a giveaway as the nifty toolkit.

So ultimately there had to be a goal of the booths at these shows and who
are their target audience. Unfortunately this probably was never addressed
or was addressed by ameteur or inexperience marketers.

Then again, it could be that the whole goal of YAPC was to give a bunch of
immature, easily hog-washed, barely post-pubescent, socially-stunted males a
chance to actually talk to a female that wouldn't give them the time of day
otherwise. As I said, I didn't make it this year.

Any organization that fails to factor into its marketing $'s the growing
female market with growing purchasing power ends up wasting good money. 

There are several good "women in technology" type org's out there helping to
promote positive non-gender environments as well as address issues directly
related to women in technology. A good starting place is the Grace Hopper
Celebration of Women in Computing 2000
http://www.sdsc.edu/Hopper/REGISTER/index.html

FYI...I had decided to stay out of this tangent since its usually a circular
discussion. But as I politely step off my soap-box I just wanted you to know
that you can blame Mike808 for my change of heart. *grin*

I hope everyone has a wonderful evening.

--christine

ps. my favorite flavor of chauvinist is roasted, on a spit *grin*