TechGreatest
OnePlus’ Sexist “Ladies First Campaign” Leaves A Bitter Aftertaste
Nobody wants a OnePlus One THIS BAD. Latest OnePlus marketing campaign rightly deemed sexist
Having already started a craze of smashing working smartphones and ripping off contest winners due to their lack of mathematic skills, OnePlus’ latest marketing campaign flop comes in the form of sexism.
The latest ploy is a “Ladies First” campaign involving women sending in pictures of themselves to the company website while displaying the OnePlus logo somewhere in the photo. The OnePlus community (primarily men) will then vote for the best picture, the top 50 of which will receive an invite to purchase the OnePlus One phone, and 100 random invites will also be sent to other women who participated in the competition.
In addition, if 500 entries are reached, the woman in the most liked picture will receive a free 64GB Sandstone Black OnePlus One handset. Only just a whiff of objectification, so far.
The problem really struck with the linguistics of the competition description; “Ladies, no nudity please”. Whilst this would have seemed like a harmless joke amongst, what I am presuming to be, a predominantly male genius marketing team, the general public were not in so much agreement.
When you really dissect the campaign – the implications of women jumping at the chance of getting naked and publicising it for men to judge on the internet for a £229 smartphone – it emphasises just how ridiculous the idea really is.
The “Ladies First” campaign has since been plugged, along with the original thread used to voice complaints, subsequent to the hugely inevitable backlash of the bizarre marketing strategy.
We think it might be time for OnePlus to stay out of trouble and try a few normal marketing campaigns.
Update: The Competition has now been cancelled.
Emma Lycett
12:40, 13 Aug 2014