Archive for April, 2008

By Tom Polanski

On Tuesday, the morning of the Ad-Tech conventions, I stepped from my Union Square hotel on to a sunlit street swept by a gentle bay breeze. Spending time in San Francisco is always a delight. I’ve spent a considerable amount of my life in the City and I’m always glad for a chance to visit.

I arrived at the Moscone Center at about 9:30 AM on Tuesday. The reception area was crowded but well organized. It was clear that everybody handing out the badges and the bags was doing their best to be as positive and pleasant as possible. I admire people who are professional and even more so when I know that they’re probably temporary help hired for the day at an hourly rate.

I took the escalator to the lower level into the din of what can only be called a bad disco. One advertiser placed a banner display bathed in blue at the far wall across from the escalator. I felt like I was faced with a drunken Muscovites idea of an inviting entrance into a club. I looked around expecting to be offered free shots of Stoly but instead I was greeted by two women who claimed to represent one of the companies at Ad-Tech. I didn’t catch the company’s name as I was dumbfounded by the outfits these women were wearing, which were scanty and on their bodies a little scary. The girls looked like hookers who might be carriers of something contagious, potentially giving new meaning to the term, “viral marketing”.

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