Netregistry nurses at CeBIT: Naughty or nice?
May 13th, 2009 by Jonathan Crossfield
The Netregistry stand at CeBIT this year has been a sensational success, despite some criticism and claims of controversy. If you didn’t attend CeBIT, our stand used a medical theme of doctors and nurses as we offered to find the online cures for whatever symptoms a website may suffer. We populated the stand with doctors, orderlies and nurses to add a bit of humour and stand out from the crowd of business suits.
The concept of the stand was designed to have fun with the brand, show Netregistry as having a sense of humour and to engage with the audience in a way that goes beyond merely handing out a leaflet and hoping someone will call. With the campaign coordinated with lead gathering, scripted follow-up emails, specially designed information packs and the ability to provide concrete advice and sales on site, we felt we offered more to the delegates than most other stands focussed on acquiring business cards or smiling politely as people passed.
(Check out more photos from CeBIT and our video of the event and our stand here)
The stand worked exceptionally well, keeping the sales team incredibly busy and garnering praise from visitors for our creativity and humour. The health pack each visitor took away was extremely popular and was designed to be read on returning home with a chuckle, rather than added to a stack of paper in the in-tray and forgotten, like most expo handouts.
Amongst a lot of standard tech stands offering servers and CPUs, it is important to stand out and ensure the brand isn’t forgotten. A huge round of applause must go to Aaron Darc – our copywriter – and Karen Lim-Sam – our Marketing Administrator – for devising and producing such a brillant creative idea with virtually no budget, no time and a lot of ideas.
“Controversy Hits CeBIT!”
Sadly, the two nurses did come in for some criticism from a handful of vocal critics on Twitter and elsewhere – prompting stories to be written about the Netregistry Controversy.
Most of the loudest critics weren’t even attending the event. “ I wasn’t at CeBIT, I didn’t see the ‘nurses’ in question. But I didn’t have to…” was one typical example of someone incensed by others tweeting about the nurses and thereby making extreme assumptions about their nature without the context provided by the whole stand. This was inflamed still further by Tech Wired choosing to use a picture of a provocatively sexy nurse to accompany the article on their website (later removed). The image wasn’t of one of our nurses but of a sexed up version depicting exactly the derogatory image we had tried to avoid. Suddenly, the story of ”Netregistry’s naughty nurses” began to overtake the serious stuff happening at CeBIT and prompted many visitors to the stand to wonder what all the fuss was about on seeing the genuine article. We shouldn’t be surprised – it made a more fun and titilating story for the IT sites to write about. Ironically, our stand and brand gained even more exposure because of the additional publicity.
In the end, you have to make up your own mind whether the Netregistry stand was effective and fun or questionable and controversial. No marketing campaign will ever please everyone. Ultimately, the stand was a great success, with far more praise than criticism and achieved everything Netregistry set out to achieve… and more.
Now we’re talking about next year!
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I thought it rocked! Well done
Pretty stupid, it seems you want to act like Godaddy
as a woman I will be migrating my hosting accounts from you guys from next month.
I met the Netregistry Nurses and doctors today. being a customer I thought I should say hi. They where very professional looking. Some of the other stands did have true eyecandy “womanning” them, so I don’t know why anyone would have an issue with Netregistry. Great stand guys.
Storm in a D-cup! Oh sorry, that was the other stands who’s brands are yet to be uncovered! (unlike the woman manning their stands)
Wasn’t at CeBit, never have been probably never will but what wonderful marketing! I only know about it because Jonathan Crossfeild’s articles in Net Mag have caught my attention and have followed his “stuff” in a mission to learn about the online community really. – Fabulous writer, should be essential reading everyday.
I can’t believe woman are so insensed by this – I think they’re buying into the hype. From what I’ve seen nobody at the NR stand looks to have been recruited specifically for the purpose of sexualising the stand. The nurses are actually quite well covered. I do note that they are quite young and can pull off white tights but hey, they weren’t asked to bare chests etc. I’m sure they had a great time.
Bit of concern about gender specification of roles but that’s not about “sex selling”. Many brands do far worse. I encourage you to look at http://alamode-net.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html for a consideration of Dolce & Gabbana’s use of an image of gang rape which apparently appeals to women!
This is getting a little extensive but any woman who is hitting the roof over this really needs to think about picking their fights with maternity leave side swiped yet again, woman in other cultures who still don’t have citizenship status etc etc.
Stupid: if your canning your NR accounts over this with no other rational consideration you are as your name implies.
Wow, thanks for that Denise. A fan! I should have you bronzed on my mantlepiece…
maybe you could take some of those nurses and put them in your bloody support area, i have been waiting on the for 55 minutes rofl
Hopefully by the time I’m writing this, you’ve been answered and satisfied. I’ve sent you an email though to offer any additional assistance should you need it and to get feedback.
Wow. Newsflash Netregistry: Women can be doctors and men can be nurses! Now that would have been a marketing trick worth talking about.
pfctdayelise´s last blog post..Wikimedia Commons 2008 Picture of the Year – preliminary results
Actually pfctdayelise, and anyone else who still cares… The key words there are “can be” not “must be”. And you’re right, it would have been quite a marketing trick, since it’s completely contrary to statistical norms.
Why are so many women still crying about sexism, in a world where you can’t dare show a female bum on TV, but showing a male one running across the screeen is cause for much glee? Some of the militant feminists need to take a step back and ponder whether they’re maybe not attempting to be “more equal” than others.
Enough of this garbage, let’s ALL get back into the kitchen, I’m starving.
Personally, I don’t think the stall/staff stood out at all. I walked past it twice before I noticed it.
If people want to have a whinge about the fact that the stall staff were dressed up in theme, then they probably shouldn’t go to an I.T. conference.
Other vendors at the conference were a LOT more ‘out there’ and objectable to.
All in all, not bad, but by no means over the top.