|
Ideally we wouldn't need this kind of stuff, people would have some perfectly logical approach to evaluating all the vendors, and use their attention correctly. Perhaps it's a game theory problem; if we were guaranteed no one else would use sex appeal, nor would we. The problem then is that big flashy booths are far, far, more expensive then hiring even a half-dozen very attractive people. But really, it goes deeper than that. A lot tradeshows are a vacation for the attendees, so if throw a fun party for everyone, you'll have a lot of potential customers hanging out with you. This is important if you're in a competitive service business where your competitors are nominally offering the exact same service. Everyone says their datacenter won't go offline, that they'll have proper service, etc. Getting to know your vendor/customer goes a long way in keeping that business relationship when shit hits the fan, as it inevitably will. As far as the sales info on the floor, of course you need real full-time staff. The temporary staff is just to get people's attention, let them know more or less what we offer, and keep them enqueued while a one of our sales people gets over to them. But for commodity services, everyone already knows pretty much what we're offering. This probably doesn't hold true for truly novel software products that really are different from competitors. Anyways, if the gender balance changed, and attractive young women weren't enough to get a party going with our customers, we'd come up with something else. But parties seem to be a fairly common denominator, so I doubt that'll change any time soon. |