Joey the Booth Babe

The practice at many trade shows of hiring scantily clad women to pose for pictures with attendees and otherwise incentivize (male) passers-by into the promoter’s booth came in for renewed criticism in January when the E3 Expo, a huge Los Angeles–based video game conference, announced it would begin enforcing a ban on Booth Babes, as they are known in the industry, with $5,000, on-the-spot fines.

I was reminded of those headline at the Motivation Show last week. While the Chicago trade show is hardly known for booth babes—and certainly not excessively scantily clad ones—the Tourism Australia booth had people lined up six deep to be photographed with an attractive young model they brought along.

They model in question, Hopalong, can hardly be considered a Booth Babe, although the purpose was the same—turning over a business card was the price of a photo, and you were hit up to talk to someone if they liked what they saw on it.. Besides, Hopalong was too male, too furry and had far too big a tail to qualify as a real Booth Babe. Which is not criticism. As 10-month-old baby kangaroos—or Joeys—go, he was quite attractive.

As an attraction, he was also a huge success, both because he proved so popular that people (such as yours truly) were drawn to the booth just to see what was causing the commotion, and because he defined, in a very real way, why Australia is such a good incentive destination. Even a small kangaroo is the symbol the powerful draw of the exotic that Australia offers, along with benefits like famous beaches, luxury properties and a friendly, English-speaking populace. You couldn’t walk out of that booth without realizing just how successful an incentive trip Australia would be in motivating people to work harder.

Not that there weren’t traditional Booth Babes at the Motivation Show. But my only real memory of one I have retained is the young woman clad in a grass skirt and coconut-bikini-top walking glumly to a booth one morning, with a drag in her step and slump in her shoulders that said quite clearly: “Oh God, I’m facing an entire day of this.” You’ll note which of the two I took a photo with. That said, at least one sober, well-respected industry veteran I met was running off to the New York booth to get meet the two Firemen who were signing their pictures in the FDNY’s annual “firefighter hunks” calendar.