My apologies for the rather sexist title of this post. I tried to find something more “PC” but could not come up with anything that was even close in its accuracy when trying to describe the situation we ran into time and time again during CES 2013.
As is so often the case at trade shows, there were numerous attractive women in scantily clad outfits showing off the latest gear. In fact, in some cases, referring to them as “scantily clad” would be an overstatement. For example, on the first morning the show floor was open, I happened to pass by a petite woman with long black hair, a thong bikini and … not much else. Her hair was taped in place in order to cover her breasts and another woman was painting her entire body with black body paint. What this had to do with consumer electronics was beyond me but so be it.
Later that day, Judie and I passed by the California Headphone Booth. Judie’s husband Kevin has a pair and, in fact, was using them the night before in our suite. The California Headphone Company started life as a Kickstarter project. Judie and Kevin backed the project, and, for $65, Kev got a pair of the Laredo edition California Headphones. We stopped by because I had admired Kev’s, and Judie wanted to show them to me.
An attractive woman was working the booth and walked up to us. Wondering what the post-Kickstarter price was I asked her, “What’s the MSRP?”.
She replied, “I don’t know, I would have to get someone from the company to find out.”
Judie said, “Okay, we just wanted to know what the post-Kickstarter price was.”
She looked at Judie like a deer in headlights. “What’s Kickstarter?” she asked.
Then she went on to say, “I do know that these sell for $99, and the other ones are $199.”
Apparently she had no idea that the company she was representing had used Kickstarter to launch their product, and she didn’t need to ask a company rep in order to find out what the post-Kickstarter MSRP was. What she needed to do was consult a dictionary and find out what MSRP stands for in the first place, and in that moment we realized we didn’t need to waste another second with this Booth Bimbo.
So there she was at the Consumer Electronics Show working the California Headphone Booth without knowing the history of the product or what MSRP stood for. I have no issue if companies want to grab attention by having attractive people show off their goods, but the least they can do it give them a few minutes of training before they turn them loose.
It is just common sense… and good business.