TMO's Guide To Tokyo Booth "Campaign Ladies"

The concept of having attractive females at trade show booths is among the oldest in the business, and terms like "Booth Babe" get tossed around by the male dominated regular trade show attendees all the time. We shanit stoop to using such an obviously sexist and exploitative term for these people, but fortunately Japanis massive trade show culture offers us a replacement. In Japan, women hired to work a trade show booth to hand out flyers and generate attention for the booth are called Campaign Ladies. Considering Japanis reputation for Campaign Ladies, we thought it might interest our readers if we offered a guide to some of the Campaign Ladies to be found in this show.

Campaign Ladies are often aspiring models hired by "Scouts" who prowl Japanis subways and streets looking for attractive women. This is a large industry in Japan, and it is very much an expected part of any trade show. Just like in the States, these folks are hired talent and almost never work for the company in any sort of regular capacity. Attendees at any given trade show will stop and ask a Campaign Lady to pose for them, and it is not uncommon to have 2-4 people simultaneously snapping pictures of an individual at any given time. When not being photographed, their job is to hand out flyers and other promo materials, get people to sign up for give aways and drawings (sometimes extremely aggressively), help visitors to the booth get the information they want, and smile, smile, smile.

Working a trade show is no walk in the park for anyone, and Campaign Ladies in Japan have it even harder in that it is also expected for them to pose for pictures as we mentioned above. In the US, picture requests for hired talent are much more rare. All of this has to be taken into context with the rest of Japanese culture, and we canit pretend to understand it all, but the bottom line is that everyone seems to enjoy it.

So, without further ado, we offer you TMOis Guide To Tokyo Booth "Campaign Ladies." We visited Microsoftis booths (they had more than one booth), the Roxio booth, Symantecis booth, Adobeis booth, Eclipseis booth, and our personal favorite, the Microline booth.