Hasta La Creative!

At first glance the image of a woman in lingerie draped across a bed staring seductively at the camera seems so misplaced in a tweet about discounted hosting that one suspects the social media manager slipped the wrong image into the tweet by mistake. Upon further inspection, it seems they’ve taken a cue from the Protein World twitter trolling tactic, and are aiming to woo the “I like semi-undressed women in my twitter feed” crowd as customers.

50% off Mondays. Promo Code: 50OFFMONDAY. Limited to first 150 signups. #VPS #COUPON http://t.co/8i23C3VBPQ pic.twitter.com/cdED6bhRqX— FORTAcloud (@FortaCloud) May 18, 2015

“How is this not sexist?” asks a man named Richard on twitter, wondering what it has to do with hosting, but Fortacloud respond explaining that men like pinups. Or something.
@RichardPrice Well, 99% of our customers are male between the ages of 18 and 42, similar to another industry. See https://t.co/KvuH8MlEWo.— FORTAcloud (@FortaCloud) May 18, 2015

Naturally, most of twitter is now out to explain to the FortaCloud hosting company, located in Reston, Virginia USA what sexism is, and loudly declaring “this would not have happened had they had any woman on staff”. To this FortaCloud brings up the famously filled with eyecandy & innuendo Godaddy ads, like “Shower” and “Proceedings”, one of which made it to the top 5 worst super bowl commercials of all time list. Honestly, FortaCloud should just bring up the PETA ads, they specialize in nude women for attentions sake.

@AdamTuttle We have many of both Adam. Do you not recall the #godaddy Super Bowl ads a few years back?— FORTAcloud (@FortaCloud) May 18, 2015

Fortacloud make it very clear that they are but one among many, and the FTC regulation sin the USA are not quite like the rules applied by the ASA in the UK or Reklamombudsmannen in Sweden. “Advertisements must not be unfair” the regulations state, but the mere fact that an ad offends someone or can be considered sexist is not “unfair” in this sense. FortaCloud will simply be tried in the court of twitter opinions, and who knows how many customers they’ll get from this little tweet. I can honestly say that it won’t sway me into hosting with them, anyway.

@randompunter @RichardPrice According to Wikipedia, advertising with images of beautiful girls is sexism. Certainly, we are one among many.— FORTAcloud (@FortaCloud) May 18, 2015