Category: Working It

For those of you who are lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the term “Booth Babe,” allow me to explain. A Booth Babe, euphemistically referred to as a “promotional model,” is a young girl clad in a risqué ensemble who stands in front of exhibitors’ booths at conference and trade shows. She and several other of her busty colleagues hand out fliers and try to lure you into the exhibitor booth, where some much less attractive person will tell you about their products and services and not let you escape until you sign up for their newsletter.

I’m always surprised at the abundance of booth babes at conferences, especially at professional gatherings like CTIA and FOSE, two that I’ve attended recently. Sure, maybe booth babes still have a place at the International Lingerie Conference, but the antiquated concept is inappropriate at important trade shows and conferences that are meant to provide an opportunity to learn about current industry issues. Businesses should abandon this outdated promotional ploy, not just because it’s offensive (which it is) but because it doesn’t work. Here’s why:

Booth babes are poor brand ambassadors.

What does a naughty nurse have to do with your office supply products? What does a dominatrix have to do with your IT consulting services? Probably nothing. It’s difficult for businesses to find a segue to these sexy costumes. Yes, booth babes attract attention, but do you really want your brand represented by a nineteen year old in spandex leiderhosen?   What if a passerby asks her a question about your product?  I’m sure that many booth babes are educated, bright, and articulate, but I’m equally as sure that companies provide them with only a cursory amount of product information before sending them out to the aisle with a fistful of free ballpoint pens. Even if she is effective in increasing your booth traffic, your audience won’t remember your stellar PowerPoint presentation, they’ll remember your booth babe’s strategically placed name tag.

Booth babes insult your customers and your products. 

When you rely on booth babes to promote your product, you’re insulting your customers’ intelligence. Booth babes (or, rather, the people who employ booth babes) send out a clear message: I think that my customers can be won over by some good old-fashioned thigh-flashing. Furthermore, the use of distracting models shows that your company does not think its product is compelling enough to bring in customers on its own. If you need near-naked women to convince people to test your mobile app, I’m betting it’s not that great.

This just in: Women are in the workforce!

In fact, we make up a pretty hefty portion of the workforce and even have purchasing power. Booth babes emerged back in the 1950’s, when they were probably the only women on the convention floor, but this is no longer the case.  Booth babes alienate and offend female conference attendees. Not to mention that many booth babes promote companies that have female employees standing in the booth, just a few feet away. Professional, successful employees with all of their clothes on. Booth babes send a message to your female colleagues that women ought to look pretty and alluring, not educated, ambitious, or—gasp!–actually capable of selling a product based on its virtues alone.

Fortunately, many conventions are moving in the right direction (examples here, here, and here).  Booth Babes aren’t worth the risk. Child labor laws aside, this outdated promotional tool sends the wrong message to your customers and employees.

Workplace jargon, the kind we employ when emailing a colleague or client, relies on certain customs that mark the communication as “professional.” We close our emails with “Thanks,” we provide contact information, we CC relevant parties. These rituals signal to our readers that we are sending the email to communicate official business. While the traditions of professional communication are helpful in some ways, the clichés they constantly recycle are not. So many meetings, emails, and newsletters that I see are teeming with clichés—hackneyed phrases that have lost their meaning.  Readers perceive them as symptoms of laziness.  More importantly, many of the standard office cliches do not work. Their meanings are confused and their purposes wrongheaded. Let’s examine a few.

1.“Your Baby”

How it’s used: “You should make all necessary arrangements for this conference.  It’s your baby.”

Why it’s used: To impress upon the listener that the item in question is solely his/her responsibility, something that is completely under his/her control.

Why it doesn’t work:  At a literal level, the logic of this cliché is flawed.  A baby is something that is made by two people, not one, and most working adults understand the basics of human reproduction.  A baby grows and develops slowly, often independently of and in the opposite direction that its parents intend.  A baby shouldn’t be examined for defects and forced through rigorous quality assurance checks.  Referring to an important project as “your baby” understates the achievement.  It downplays the achievement by referring to it in a colloquial, slang fashion.  Think of the difference between your boss telling you, “You did a great job with the pitch.   You really made it your baby,” versus, “You did a great job with the pitch. I can tell that you were the driving force behind its completion.”  Calling the project and the project manager by their rightful terms ensures that the credit is received when it’s due.

2.“Reach Out”

How it’s used: “Have we heard back from the finance department?  Let’s reach out to the CFO to get some closure.”

Why it’s used:  To replace simpler terms like email, call, contact, or walk into his/her office.

Why it doesn’t work:  We use reach out in the workplace because it sounds fancier than its literal meaning: contacting someone. Reach out evokes an image of an arm reaching out into space to make physical connection with another body, an action that requires much more effort than the real action, which involves clicking a button or two.  The phrase is problematic, though, because it’s not specific.  It could refer to leaving a detailed voice mail or sending a generic invite on LinkedIn.  When you use reached out,  you risk sounding like you’re exaggerating the significance of your action and concealing details.  Remember, speaking clearly is speaking smartly.  Use the more accurate expression, and expel this overused phrase from your lexicon.

3.“Get in Bed With”

How it’s used: “We’re already in bed together—the teaming agreement’s been signed.”

Why it’s used: To show that two people or groups are partnering.

Why it doesn’t work: I’m no prude, but yuck.  In an increasingly co-ed and multi-generational professional world, this phrase’s creep-factor is high.  Its slimy feeling grows when it’s used, as it often is, to talk about potential relationships, as in, “How can we get the client to get in bed with us?”  Of course sales and marketing have a seductive quality, but is this the best way to characterize it?  Realistically, representing a fulfilling, long-lasting relationship with this image is not accurate these days.  Getting out of the bed, never to return, is just as easy as getting in it, so this cliché is not only borderline-icky but also dated.  .

4.“At the End of the Day”

How it’s used: “At the end of the day, we have to lower prices.”

Why it’s used: To emphasize the goal rather than the process

Why it doesn’t work: Unlike some of the other phrases mentioned here, this logic behind this cliché does work on some level. We use this phrase to tell our coworkers that the final product must be produced, the deadline met, regardless of the actions that get us there. By focusing on the end result instead of the process, though, we risk alienating our team members. Many folks may be irked by this phrase because it’s usually spouted by out by someone who isn’t involved in the process at all. When we dismiss the work, we dismiss the workers, and that does not lead to effective collaboration. Furthermore, wouldn’t it be ideal to have the work completed before the end of the day, so we have some time to proofread? I think so. It’s time for this generic sentence to be retired.

5. “Revisit”

How it’s used: “You told the client to take a cab from the airport? Let’s revisit that.”

Why it’s used: To replace more straightforward phrases like fix it or do it again

Why it doesn’t work: When we tell a coworker that she should “revisit” the third paragraph of her proposal, we’re actually telling her that we believe she should rewrite that paragraph. What’s so heartbreaking about this sentence: “I think there are some errors in that third paragraph. You should go back and revise”? When we select words like revisit, we’re subscribing to the idea that direct language is confrontational language. It’s entirely possible to be forthright without being offensive. If a project or action is in need of fixing, editing, or a good-old-fashion do-over, just say so.