SES NYC expo center a joke?

[GOTseo]

Well, I am at the NYC SES conference and have had a great time. I would like to comment on the expo center. This place has so many people that are displaying, but very few of them have a clue on what they are doing.


Accoona - these people give away a mini cooper, but yet no one know what they do? I see the name everywhere and go to their booth. They have no literature, and little bottle of hot sauces that make no sense to me. I don't know if that is their marketing campaign, but if so what a waste. The only time I figured out what they are is when the announced it while give away the car. "we are a search engine, and we have artificial intelligence"

SEO INC - I know that sex sells, but are you kidding me? They have girls in baby t's wit the slogan "want to be on top". How degrading do you want to be in supposedly professional environment. The girls are sort of cute, but you could have done better if that was the message you wanted to pass along.

When they were giving away the laptop, someone is on the mic and says "ok girls shake it up really well". Two of the girls take the box and start jumping up and down with it, how sad. I heard murmurs in the crowd at how distasteful this was. Shame on these guys, they have a great rep for the quality of work they do. I could imagine what some of the female attendants thought about the promotion.

There’s a bunch of other people I will comment on, but the Yahoo and Google and MSN party are still taking the toll on me. Hopefully tomorrow I will have some more interesting comments on some other companies that throw money at things at this conference.

Anyone else at the conference? Feel free to comment, - I will post further on other literature received from some companies. Some of the writing is just terrible.

[randfish]

GOT - You are right about the expo - it was generally very poor. I met some good people (Patrick Gavin from TLA and Noel from Marketleap), but my overall experience with it was also distasteful. The scantily clad girls was a horrible idea and the company will no doubt be rewarded with relative failure. That should dissuade this type of activity in the future - this isn't a comic book convention

[GOTseo]

My partner talked to these people from goecart. Apparently they just did a bad job presenting information. They couldn't answer questions on pricing, usability, seo features and so on. I visited their site, and it looks like a hacked up version of oscommerce with the pricing of monster commerce.

Good luck to them.


Congratulations to Hitwise, Brucecaly, and iProspect. Great presentations and great literature. I find it interesting how Bruceclay is setting up SEO tests and regulations.

[Keke21]

So where are the pictures of these great parties (Yahoo, MSN, AskJeeves) I missed out on??

[sem4u]

I didn't go and it may have been distasteful but it has got YOU talking about it

[Jill Whalen]

Yeah, I had no idea what Accoona did either. (I found out later because someone from there spammed my forum with a self-promotional post which we promptly removed.)

But I did want that mini cooper. Speaker's couldn't enter, apparently though. Does anyone know who won it? I'd like to buy it off them! (I'm really planning on buying one just like the one they were giving away, some time in the near future.)

I didn't actually notice the seoinc girls, but the guys looked like they were in the mafia and were very scary. I avoided their booth like the plague!

[Marcia]

I am still finding this very perplexing. Why in the world would an SEO company put on a titty show at a search engine conference? I'm afraid the logic eludes me.

[TMunny]

Obviously either you all haven't been paying attention over the past 5 years at the Ad Tech shows, or you are new to the internet industry.

The SEO, Inc. booth girls were not only par for the course in our industry, but I hought they brought some excitement and drama to the otherwise stale and tediious environment at these SES shows (at the Chicago 2004 you could hear a pin drop).

In addition - their booth was by far the busiest and most trafficked of the show (except for when Yahoo! gave away free cake). I assume these guys made out like bandits with leads while Bruce Clay was vigorously twirling his mustache.

I give SEO, Inc. a standing ovation for taking the initiative to bring back the excitement of the "boom days". You should all be proud.

Originally Posted by GOTseo

When they were giving away the laptop, someone is on the mic and says "ok girls shake it up really well". Two of the girls take the box and start jumping up and down with it...

Darn, I miss all the good stuff!
Anyone get a video?

[seomike]

Obviously either you all haven't been paying attention over the past 5 years at the Ad Tech shows, or you are new to the internet industry.

The SEO, Inc. booth girls were not only par for the course in our industry, but I hought they brought some excitement and drama to the otherwise stale and tediious environment at these SES shows (at the Chicago 2004 you could hear a pin drop).

In addition - their booth was by far the busiest and most trafficked of the show (except for when Yahoo! gave away free cake). I assume these guys made out like bandits with leads while Bruce Clay was vigorously twirling his mustache.

I give SEO, Inc. a standing ovation for taking the initiative to bring back the excitement of the "boom days". You should all be proud.

I'm sure they were busy. But when you're SEO hooters your visitors are most likely not there to talk business.

How you use people to self promote tells a lot about character.

[ferret77]

I'm sure seoinc is doing just fine

How you use people to self promote tells a lot about character.

Thats sort of funny because, so many business use models/sex to sell products

Did you see that godaddy ad during the superbowl?

[Marcia]

Did you see that godaddy ad during the superbowl?

No, but I read a discussion about it on a webmasters list where some of the people were moving their domains away because they didn't want to do business with a company that stooped low enough to do that kind of marketing. And they were men, too - men who have more respect for women than that.

Thats sort of funny because, so many business use models/sex to sell products

I suppose from one perspective it may be funny, but I think it's possibly the most sexist, demeaning thing toward women I've yet to hear of in this industry. It's a disgusting disgrace, displaying and exploiting women as sex objects - as "things". I hope any man who dares to support that kind of low blow to women by giving a female-unfriendly company like that his business gets sent to sleep in the guest room by his wife permanently.

It's an abomination, IMHO.

WOW I see someone has some strong viewpoints about using sex for marketing.

I hope your strong opinions are bourn out by NOT supporting products like; Coke, Pepsi-Cola, Revlon, any fashion designer, Ford, GM, Honda, GE or any of the thousands upon thousands of business that use sex to sell or promote their product or service.

And there is no way my “old lady” is going to read this....

[I, Brian]

Lol! Another SEW thread turns into an ethics discussion.

[TMunny]

I think Marcia should take this one up with the FCC. And while she's at it - talk to 75% of all advertising campaigns....including Victoria Secret's and the other 3 booths at Ad Tech NY in November who also had booth babes.

It's a two-way street. I'm sure SEO's booth girls weren't held there against their will.

[Marcia]

It isn't an ethical issue at all, Brian. It's an issue of how human beings are treated - or rather, mistreated as a gender. As a matter of fact, in a workplace environment here, sexism can be a legal issue.

[ferret77]

Some of those models make a lot of money for just standing around smiling

more then people with degrees, or people breaking their backs at a lot of jobs

I wish I could get job doing that, woman could stick money in my shorts all day long.

While I don't believe in marriage, my girlfriend thinks that the godaddy ad was funny, and I'm sure she would have got kick out of an seo company with bikini babes. I don't really think you speak for all woman. Almost all advertisements for travel have hard bodies in bikinis somewhere in them. Alcohol ads must really get your bee in bonnet.

[binteractive]

I agree with tmunny. This is not about sexual exploitation (I am sure that that the booth babes were paid hansomely and do this for a living). This was about stepping up and daring to do somehing different to draw attention to their booth and company. SEO Inc. is very well respected in the industry and all you need to do is look at their rankings.

I for one hope to see more of this at future shows.

[dazzlindonna]

Ok, another woman's point of view. I wasn't there, so I didn't actually see what everyone is talking about, so this is just a general comment. As a woman, I doubt I would have even thought twice about SEO Inc's method of advertising. Perhaps that is because everyone else in advertising does it (generally speaking) or perhaps it is because I just don't think its a big deal - probably a little of both. I understand Marcia's viewpoint from a theoretical stance, but in reality, it doesn't matter to me. Maybe some female-oriented SEO company should show up with a bunch of hunky guys in boxer briefs at the next show, just to even the score. I wonder how many females would run over to the booth. Anyway, I'm sure it is off-putting to some women, and I respect their reasons, but it's no big deal to some of us as well. Just my 2 cents.

Marcia,
I do not see any messages from SeoInc on this forum! Guess why!!!!
They do not have time for this.
They working probably on thousand leads from SES NY expo!
And that was the whole point!
What I saw they had triple traffic by their both that had searchenginewatch ))

Enjoy, be happy for them and have a great Day.
Nightingale