The Adnostic

Ad:Tech is a tri-annual interactive advertising and marketing conference held in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. The industry's best and brightest show up schmooze, speak, learn, and party.

This year the San Francisco meeting invited bloggers to broadcast their impressions in semi-real time. This is great for people who want to go, but don’t have the personal capital or company backing to buy a ticket and finance the trip. People, like myself.

There was one entry that struck me as just plain wrong on multiple levels. Brad Waller has an entry under Exhibit Hall Observations entitled Booth Babes and Other Attractions, which talked about Search Engine Optimization, Inc.'s strategy of using a couple buxom girls in tight tank tops emblazoned with the catch phrase of "Wanna be on Top?" to attract attention from potential customers.

Now, I don't want to come off like a bra-burner, and I'm not about to claim that sex doesn't sell (it always has and it always will), but this is an awfully base stunt for a professional conference with a good portion of attendees being educated females. Why would any professional services firm alienate half of their potential audience?

The post has been edited significantly to remove the author's juvenile odes of appreciation for the booth babes since I first read it, but I'm still a little irked.

Both Mr. Waller and SEO, Inc. could have shown some class.