Cloud Provider’s Lingerie Photo Outraged Twitter, Doubled Sales
May 21, 2015 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
FortaCloud’s Twitter promotion prompted outrage – and doubled sales.
Twitter
Cloud computing provider FortaCloud Corp. said it stood by its decision to promote its services on Twitter using a provocative photograph of a model sprawled on a bed wearing lingerie and high heels.
FortaCloud prompted a firestorm of criticism on Twitter on Monday, when it tweeted the photo with an offer of a 50% discount on services such as online computing and data storage. The company published the offer with a semi-nude photo in a bid for attention, said Prieur Leary, 46, FortaCloud’s CEO.
The promotion succeeded. The company posted double its normal sales volume on Monday, Mr. Leary said. He declined to provide sales figures.
Twitter
By Tuesday, more than 125,000 people had viewed the Twitter message, and it had generated a long stream of online responses, most of them slamming the company for posting an inappropriate image.
“Thanks for helping me decide which cloud-hosting company to cross off any shortlist it appears on,” wrote Simon Harriyott, a UK software developer, in a Twitter message. ”No, following me won’t help. Removing and apologising for lewd, sexist adverts might,” he added.
The technology industry has been grappling with its image as an industry that can be hostile toward women. Recent events have drawn attention to technology-related sexism, including Ellen Pao’s gender discrimination lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers and the Gamergate controversy that erupted in mid-2014 over gender stereotypes in videogames.
FortaCloud’s tweet was posted by a male sales and marketing employee whom Mr. Leary declined to identify. The employee stoked outrage among Twitter users by defending his use of the image in subsequent posts. As the photo gained widespread attention, Leary asked the employee to stop responding to criticism, the CEO said in a phone interview.
Leary likened the promotion to sexually charged campaigns launched by companies such as GoDaddy and Ryanair.
“It was clearly just trying to get the attention of the demographic that’s our customer base,” he said. “I would say, yes it objectifies women, but that’s fairly standard in the western culture.
“There are a whole lot of ads out there that have nothing to do with the product that use beautiful women to sell them,” Mr Leary said. He described himself as a “feminist” with a wife and two daughters. “The intent was not to aggravate people,” he said.
“I am not unhappy at all about the exposure and the material increase in sales,” he said. “Frankly, he was very surprised a beautiful woman in lingerie would result in such a response.”
Founded in 2014, FortaCloud is based in Reston, Virginia, and owned by Grupo Pronto S.A., a Panamanian holding company.
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