Direct Mail, Internet Marketing and Short Skirts

I threw a valuable morning this week at the Direct Marketing Fair at Earls Court, which was sharing the hall, conveniently, with the Internet Marketing Fair.

On one side of the room: database-genius companies whose solutions I don't pretend to understand but who could doubtless show you how to get a mailpack in front of Osama Bin Laden.

On the other side of the room: mind-numbingly brilliant people with solutions doing impossible things...like recutting your web content dynamically to build millions of instantly optimised extra pages for your site while you have a cup of coffee.

Yet on both sides of the room...just here and there...were skinny blonde women in absurdly short and tight skirts manning stands, presumably, because the MDs of some of these brilliant, cutting edge, 21st century companies still feel that a blonde in a short skirt might just be needed to close the deal.