Despite the numerous positive reviews of the Oneus One, the company behind it still isn’t doing much to remain in consumers’ favor. For starters, Oneus has consistently under-delivered since the One’s launch in ne, shipping updates late increasing production far too slowly to meet dem. The company’s latest marketing tactic is extremely uncouth—not to mention downright misogynist— I wouldn’t be surprised if this sets the company back a significant amount. Oneus’s latest campaign is called “dies First.” It wants the Android-using women interested in purchasing the phone to post a photo of themselves with the Oneus logo to the official forums. The 50 most “well-liked ladies” will receive an invite to buy the underproduced One, as well as a free t-shirt. “Oneus wants to give a shout out to the few but beautiful female fans in our community with our dies First contest,” the company wrote in the forum post. Unfortunately, it’s only breeding comments like the following (all taken verbatim from the forum thread unedited): … Some of the commenters then took it upon themselves to post photos of the type of scantily-clad gals they’re hoping to see. There were several pictures of girls in their underwear with otoshopped logos of the Oneus One scattered throughout the thread, though thankfully the girls themselves who have taken the contest seriously kept it -rated. And there’s this gem: Fortunately, there are a few women pushing back against this ridiculous marketing campaign, though this is still an extremely low blow. In a world where women are constantly battling for things like equal pay reproductive rights, who are often antagonized for attempting to initiate change in the male-dominated gaming technology industries, someone in Oneus’s team of marketing executives actually decided that this would be the best way to garner appeal for its indie smartphone. The company should have instead focused its efforts on actually producing the devices to meet the dem for a phone it swore would dethrone all the other Android manufacturers out there. As a woman who covers technology for a living, one who reviewed the Oneus One gave it high remarks (like I said, it is a great phone), I’m baffled by all of this. Asking women to effectively “pimp” themselves out is absolutely never okay, it perpetuates antiquated ideals, like that women exist for men to gawk at. ke Samsung’s sexist faux pas at last year’s Galaxy S4 unveiling, I wouldn’t be surprised if this soils Oneus’s reputation for a while, along with the fact that it just can’t seem to get it together to meet the dem for its “flagship killer.” Thankfully, the Cyanogen team, the developers behind the forked Android software that comes stard with the One, are not thrilled with the ploy. I reached out to Steve Kondik, the CEO of Cyanogen, he assured me that the company had nothing to do with this particular marketing campaign: Immediately afterwards, Cyanogen posted the following statement on Twitter:
— Cyanogen Inc. (@CyanogenInc) August 12, 2014 Update 12:35 T: Oneus pulled the campaign deleted the “dies First” forum altogether. The remnants of the campaign live on through cached webpages. The forum admin, Carl i, posted the following: Our humble advice for how to get more women involved in tech? You can start by hiring some. apologize we will course correct for the future. At the same time, we would love to hear your feedback on how we can better get women involved in tech.
