THERE seems to be a new wave of marketing trend among most Zambian marketers and organisations which is rather peculiar.
This trend is nothing close to what formal training institutions have been teaching. In today’s industry, it is now common to find organisations exploiting the beauty of female marketing people to promote their services, as well as products.
In fact, it is now becoming widely acknowledged that physical appearances are now being used as criterion for appointing female marketers in most organisations.
There now appears to be this general misconception among many organisations that engaging sexually attractive and appealing women to marketing and sales positions will help to promote and boost their businesses.
This kind of mindset can mostly be attributed to; one, the lack of knowledge and understanding about what marketing is really about.
Secondly, the lack of appreciation of marketing as a professional discipline, which has its own fundamentals and principles of practice!
Thirdly, this misconception can also be attributed to just the absence of scruples or moral etiquette on individuals who have the responsibility and powers of employing people in organisations.
Recently, while in the company of my workmates,  I witnessed the reality of this fast-growing phenomenon, when we were visited by an unusually and exceptionally stunning young woman.
The young woman happened to be a marketing executive from a new Lusaka insurance company and she walked into the office, she immediately attracted the attention of all my male colleagues in the room.
Suddenly, almost everyone was excited to drop whatever they had been doing, to attend to her.
From her appearance, one could not have been able to distinguish the young woman from those women that men usually associate with the popular night spots around the cities of Zambia.
She wore a remarkably short skirt, her legs exposed to the knees length and very high heeled shoes.
I should confess that I too could not resist but stared at her.
Having been tasked with the responsibility of dealing with customers, I quickly moved forward to attend to her, not so much to the amusement of my colleagues.
However, from the discussion we had with the guest, I could not help but deduce that she was not a marketer by training, but rather by talent.
Soon after our interesting guest had gone, I could hear remarks from my colleagues such as ‘‘with that kind of presentation, no man can deny to give that lady the business.”
My worry and concern is that these remarks were a mere representation or reflection of the general prevailing sentiments among many individuals in the industry, the general feeling that sexy looks in women marketing professionals are a big marketing asset and tool.
This kind of approach or disposition to doing marketing borders on sexism and is premised on the maxim that women can only promote business ideas, products and services through the use of sexual appeal.
This kind of thinking to me, only portrays women in the marketing profession as being only sexual marketing objects.
For every marketer, this state of affairs should not be tolerated nor entertained, because if left unchecked, it may compromise the entire marketing fraternity and the profession as a whole.
In as much as it is widely emphasised in the marketing field that marketers should be tidy, smart and pleasant looking, organisations should not try to use these as a substitute for competency, expertise, knowledge, experience, skill, professionalism and qualifications.
Further, I have come to draw a conclusion that organisations and individuals who are practising this kind of marketing are only doing this, primarily because they have serious challenges and problems in areas of skill, competency, knowledge and experience. 
It is usually those individuals and organisations who have a vacuum in the mentioned areas, who would desperately do anything to fill up the gap and compensate for these inadequacies and failures.
Our Zambian young and beautiful women should, therefore, look out for such tendencies in some of the organisations and not to allow themselves to be used as sexual tools, objects, specifically for the purposes of getting business contracts, deals or sales. 
Marketers should always aspire to get business or contracts purely on merit and on principles of expertise, capability, reliability, experience, knowledge and credibility. 
Remember that by using unorthodox means of getting business an organisation can never be really credible and professional.
For comments write to: dennis_sokondhlovu@yahoo.com or ndhlovudennis75@gmail.com.