Next under the microsope: Promo girls
What genius thought up this vampiric marketing scheme? You can actually imagine the boardroom discussion. When are men most likely to buy things they don’t need? When they are drunk or when they think it will impress a pretty girl. So let’s combined the two by having scantily clad skanks sell alcohol to these men! Genius! Give that man a raise, in exchange for his SOUL!
Furthermore, at what point do they choose the promotional items to give away? Let’s see, we’ll need 4000 T-shirts (all size XXXXL), 4000 poorly stitched caps and a cubic f**kton of lanyards. I have so many lanyards I actually have to buy more keys. If you don’t know what a lanyard is, it’s those ropey/ribbony pieces of crap that douche bags carry their keys or wallet on and let hang out of their pockets ala “Dope on a Rope”. At some point in the past few years someone discovered that lanyards cost about 20 cents to make and they can retail for up to 50 bucks and so became the promotional item of choice for everything from beer, to cigarettes, to lanyards themselves and if you buy just 50 shots of tequila you get this classy lanyard free so all your friends know what a raging alcoholic you are.
But what is a promo girl without her “oh so classy” outfit. The fact that the outfits these girls have to wear stand out as being particularly skanky amongst the sea of skank that comprises most night clubs is really a tribute to the designers, who have removed any need to possess an imagination. I can’t decide whether these outfits are meant to be so skimpy or if these promo girls are buying their outfits on the instalment plan. I don’t drink and I have to say having a girl come up to me with her vagina hanging out is unlikely to get me to start, unless it’s supposed to make me feel sorry for her being unable to afford a complete dress and thus offer to buy her one.
One thing I will say there appears to be a direct correlation between the exclusivity of the brand and the quality of the women they employ. So while Moët and Johnny Walker appear to take some care in who they have representing their brands as all appear to be lingerie models or from the covers of fashion magazines; there are other brands that, either due to budget constraints or because they know they’re not fooling anyone (since their product is known to cause memory loss, internal bleeding and memory loss and is brewed in a bath tub) will take less rigour in choosing their brand ambassadors.
Thesy choose the kind of “girls” who look like they derive most of their income from testing experimental medicine and posing for “Before” pictures for plastic surgery and extreme weight loss programs. The kind of classy girl that it wouldn’t surprise you to find out that they’re pregnant while doing their promo work, not that that would stop them letting you buy them shots of tequila.
What scares me most when noticing how trampy and “less-attractive” these girls are, is that promo girls from all brands appear to travel in packs of at least two and in my experience, as limited as it is, there is always one who is definitely the ugly friend (here’s a tip she’s generally the one carrying the box of caps, t-shirts and lanyards) Now this is fine when we’re talking about the supermodel promo girls because then the “ugly duckling” could actually just be seen as someone attainable or in the league of “normal looking” people, but when it comes to the girls selling 2 buck Sambuca Shots the ugly girl is likely to be feral.
So next time you see Shrek and the Box Donkey limping your way do not make eye contact or you may turn into stone or even worse buy a lanyard.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the nightclub journey so far; next up… the DJ.