CTIA Wireless 2007 Trade Show

Alex Smith, The Dallas Morning News

Look at me! Look at me!

The rapper Ludacris looked out from the barroom stage at the Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando, studied his middle-age, middle-class audience and asked with a wry grin if they had all his songs up in their iPods.

The crowd cheered supportively but not entirely convincingly. Ludacris smiled wider. "I'm not sure I believe you're all fans now, but you Sprint and Samsung people are going to be fans when you walk out the door tonight. ... I'm gonna launch [this new phone] right."

That evening's private performance on behalf of the new UpStage phone showed just how hard some companies worked to grab attention and woo influential visitors at Armies of attractive women appeared in costumes that ranged from professional-but-sexy (tight black dresses) to campy-but-sexy (form-fitting pirate costumes) to nothing at all (though covered with body paint) at booths.

"You'd think that men who go to these conventions a lot would develop an immunity to show girls, but it doesn't seem to work that way. If you walk around the floor, booths always draw more people when they're stocked with hot women," said Solange Moawad, a veteran "booth babe" who helped Alcatel tout its new phone at this year's CTIA.

"Women are a particular draw at [high-tech] shows. A lot of the men here never even see attractive women, so they're all over us," added Oona O'Connell, another member of Alcatel's army. "The only ones who are worse are the gun show guys. They all look like the Unibomber, and they creep me out."

Some companies decided against booth babes for fear of projecting the wrong image, but conventiongoers expressed some surprise about which companies took what stand on the matter. Many large and prestigious manufacturers such as LG happily used eye candy, but the company that sold wireless accessories under the Playboy brand did not.

"We decided that wasn't the image that we wanted to project," was the cryptic explanation from a man in the booth who declined to give his name. "A lot of the women from other booths come over on their breaks, though – women buy much more Playboy stuff than men – so I guess we benefit from them indirectly."

Other attention seekers included T-shirts, bags, mugs, hats and other small giveaways. A company called Emoze fared particularly well with leather cowboy hats, which appeared everywhere in the building as an advertisement for its push e-mail service.

AOL and MapQuest tried to lure people into their booth withfree massages. Dozens more companies tried to pull them in with free food that ranged from candy to popcorn to a miniature ice cream shop at the Yahoo booth.

By the last day of the show, some companies were offering free beer, a situation that worried some of the women.

Given that nearly everyone involved in CTIA sells technology that helps people communicate over long distances, it might seem that the show should be replaced by tele-conferences and other cheaper alternatives to big conventions. But few people expect any technology to replace the show's function.

"Yes, all the spectacle can seem silly," said Richard Kerslake, general manager for the OMAP chip platform at Texas Instruments Inc. "But it serves the practical purpose of trying to create human contact, which often goes further than all the e-mails and phone calls and numbers in the world."

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