FYI – http://bit.ly/mfI36

good question – thanks for asking

BTW delay has been to my real life busy-ness not any bad intentions

cheers
Kate

I’m the “gay guy” the papers were talking about, behind the NR Web Clinic you were so happy to relate to the idea of exploiting women for sexual purposes in marketing. Jonathan was hoping to introduce us at the show, but alas, I was busy dealing with everything going on.

Anyway, I myself published a lengthy article dissecting the stand and controversy (completely away from my commercial position with NR), and retelling the story of how it came about – and why. It’s on the same blog I use to write mostly feminist pieces. Who would have thought?!

I also noticed you published a further piece pondering why nobody noticed the others over our nurses. I think perhaps my article may offer something on that question… perhaps you’ll find it interesting.

http://www.aarondarc.com/poppsychology/content/view/434/32/

If you expect anyone with any intelligence at all to actually believe a single word you wrote, you’re as delusional as your ‘creative’ team.

‘A real difference between having gratuitous babes on a stand that are there purely as “eye candy” and what we undertook’ – you’re kidding, right? Could you have done your ‘theme’ without the chicks in uniform? Yep, sure could have. But, some genius says ‘Hey, let’s get ‘em dressed in something skimpy/cheeky/sexy [insert your favourite here]. And bingo, you’re back to the old standby of ‘Sex sells’. Heey, you say, we’ll probably get some GREAT publicity out of it. You probably have. Still doesn’t make it right.

Frankly, I just don’t see anything creative about this type of thing any more. A prime case in point is one of your feature articles in Nett about Lynx, where they came up with a cutting edge marketing campaign featuring, you guessed it, scantily clad gals needing stuff smeared on them. Wow. How long does it take to come up with these ideas?!

I’m as red-blooded as the next bloke, but seriously, if you want to be considered ‘creative’, how about actually doing something clever? See if you can do it without some kind of sexual tie in. Oh, and you can leave the fart/toilet jokes out of it too (just a heads up for your ‘creative’ team).

You will, without question, slowly erode your own credibility and standing within the industry AND with customers, if you continue down this path. Mark my words.

I wanted to thank you for taking an interest in our CeBIT stand and marketing campaign.

Whilst there are a variety of views on the appropriateness of our nurses or our overall theme, I believe that the vast majority of visitors to CeBIT (say 90%) and well as the broader community are not offended, surprised or shocked by our stand.

I also believe there is a very real difference between having gratuitous babes on a stand that are there purely as “eye candy” and what we undertook. This appears to have been overlooked by some of the more ideological commentators. Our nurses were part of an overall medical theme designed to deliver website healthchecks to CeBIT delegates. In other words, the nurses outfits had context, where the impression given by some commentators is that they were purely in nurses outfits because of the attention (a part, but not a majority of our strategy).

Importantly, Netregistry supports 100% the stand, our marketing team, the girls in the outfits and everything we undertook at CeBIT. We are ecstatic with the attention and the excellent execution of a creative concept and campaign. So from me, WELL DONE to our marketing team. We couldn’t be happier!

Lastly, I will make the point that Netregistry is Australia’s largest regisrtar of .AU Domain names and its leading hosting company because we approach the needs of our 100,000’s of small business customers with the innovation and creativity on display at CeBIT. Our business customers care about results and (just as we did for ourselves at CeBIT) we deliver!