Dance! Munch! Mingle! Work!

"Baby Got Back" is blaring, and dancers are shimmying back and forth across a wide-screen TV.

Naturally, you're saying, this must be a chamber of commerce function, with staid, serious professionals swapping business cards and cutting deals.

Maybe you don't see a corporate event as the perfect place for Sir Mix-A-Lot's classic paean to women of substance, but William McFarland would tell you you're wrong about that. It's a message he took to Wednesday's Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce Business Expo, an annual collection of hundreds of exhibitors peddling their wares to nearly 2,000 prospective customers inside Cashman Center. There, McFarland, a special events manager with Cashman Photo (which isn't related businesswise to Cashman Center), showed off the company's Dance Heads, which allow consumers to put their faces on gyrating dancers lip-syncing to popular songs. The idea: to gin up new business selling Dance Heads appearances at company parties.

The chamber's annual Business Expo, with its broad collection of companies in industries ranging from employment agencies to banks, provides the ideal spot for gauging business owners' feelings about the economy. An informal survey of companies at the event found mixed fallout from the city's slowing economy, and for managers buying booths at the expo, spending on marketing and promotions has become more important in a sluggish business climate.

Food sales are up roughly 20 percent year over year at McMullan's Irish Pub on West Tropicana Avenue, but alcohol sales are off 2 percent and gambling revenue has dropped several percentage points, said owner Brian McMullan, whose booth offered samples of ale and shepherd's pie to attendees.

The results best the overall restaurant sector's performance, with eateries in Clark County posting sales declines for much of the past year.

A typical per-person meal tab of $12 to $14 could be pushing gains at McMullan's.

"Maybe restaurants at the top end are suffering, but people still have to eat," McMullan said. "So they come down to our level, which is a little bit lower of a price point."

McMullan's sells premium liquors, beers and ales, and the higher price of gourmet brands such as Guinness could be behind lower alcohol purchases. McMullan chalks up shrinking gambling activity at his pub not to the smoking ban but to worried local consumers, who are capping discretionary spending while they wait out rising unemployment and dwindling housing values.

Still, growth in food sales proved so strong that overall results at McMullan's improved in the last year.

Business has stayed steady at Mad Science, a company that takes scientific experiments for kids on the road to parties, summer camps and company picnics.

Mad Science marketing manager Johnny Miles -- he'd prefer you call him "Electron John" -- attributed the company's "good" sales to its unusual services, which include funky experiments with dry ice and capturing carbon dioxide. (Hey, maybe they can help with this whole global-warming thing!)

But Mad Science has also partnered with public-school programs including After School All Stars and Gear Up. The programs, which supplement education inside at-risk schools, help Mad Science rely less on economic ups and downs.

Sales have also stabilized at Payroll Solutions, a North Las Vegas business that administers employee benefits and paychecks.

Perhaps sales aren't up, but the nature of queries district manager John Bear fields from potential customers has changed.

"They're asking if what we do can save them money," Bear said.

It's certainly more frank than prospects had been in recent years, when they turned to Payroll Solutions to unload payroll-tax reporting and human resources so they could focus more on boosting sales and profits.

If the companies that attended the expo aren't feeling the results of economic languor, the event itself might be showing some strains.

About 225 companies bought exhibit booths, down from 289 vendors in 2007 and 350 exhibitors in 2006. Chamber officials kept early-bird booth prices the same as last year, at $450, to encourage sales. Though overall booth sales fell, the chamber did sell more double booths at $1,050 a piece, said chamber spokeswoman Cara Roberts. The chamber also expanded the expo's hours, from last year's 3 to 7 p.m. to this year's 1 to 7 p.m.

"The economy is certainly a factor," Roberts said of the decline in booth sales. "Many companies are experiencing tough times, and it's harder for them to dedicate the resources for an event like this. If you're having a hard time making payroll or meeting the bottom line, you have to cut your costs."

Attendance at the event totaled 1,800, which matches activity from recent years. There's no charge to attend the expo.

So why did previous exhibitors invest in returning to the event during down times?

Partly because it's fun.

Where else can you slap your likeness on a Dance Heads video, grab some barbecue, scarf down some cupcakes, get a quick massage and check out your body-fat composition? EXPO-TROLLING ALERT: You might want to check your weight and body fat before you hit the food tables.

For McMullan, who spent about $1,500 in double-booth rental, setup, food and staff costs to be at the expo, seeing what other local businesses are up to is part of the experience, even if that "fascinating" body-analysis machine told him he should "either be 7'2" or lose 30 pounds."

But exhibitors also said marketing and promoting their business becomes especially important in a down economy.

Mike Nicosia, business development manager for Tangerine Office Systems in Henderson, said his company took its first expo booth this year to meet potential customers.

"Now is the best time to spend money on marketing," said Nicosia, whose company sells office supplies, remanufactures toner and ink cartridges, deals Xerox equipment and services office electronics.

"When business is great, you don't have to spend the time and effort. You just take orders. When business is soft, that's the time to really spend on sales. It gives you the opportunity to go out and get additional business, and when overall business gets better, you reap that much more benefit from it."

McFarland, whose Dance Heads booth attracted a nonstop stream of visitors, said his company is on a perpetual hunt for new promotional avenues.

"It's always a great idea to market to other companies and businesspeople," he said. "It's an opportunity to give it your all and impress people. These expos are really great for new ideas. If it's new and it's creative, it's really going to draw attention."

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512.