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Avions de Chasse/YouTube
Bad Idea
Uber will NOT be hiring 'incredibly hot chicks' like this to drive customers around... any more
‘Who said women don’t know how to drive’… What could possibly go wrong with a slogan like that?
AN UBER PROMOTION coupling its customers with “incredibly hot chicks” under the slogan “who said women don’t know how to drive”, what could be the problem with that?
Plenty, judging from the short shelf life of the ride-sharing company’s latest brain wave.
Earlier this week, the Uber office in the French city of Lyon launched a promotion offering its customers the chance to become “the luckiest co-pilot” in town, Buzzfeed reported.
Clients were offered the chance to ride with models from Avions de Chasse – which according to the website’s own English translation was both the French term for “fighter jets” and a “colloquial term to designate an incredibly hot chick”.
Here’s what else the site offered as explanation: ”Lucky you! The world’s most beautiful ‘Avions’ are waiting for you on this app. Seat back, relax and let them take you on cloud 9!”
Thevideo for the Uber campaign featured a skin-flashing female driver touring around the city as part of what was going to be a three-day promotion.
But Uber quickly pulled the pin after a social media backlash and comments which included one blog post that accused the company of treating female drivers “like hookers”.
The ride-sharing company, which has been valued at over $18 billion (€14.2 billion) after raising cash from a string of venture-capital funds, followed it with this Twitter about-face:
The company has rapidly grown from a small startup in San Francisco an international phenomenon, offering customers the chance to share private cars, taxis and hire cars.
It quietly launched in Ireland earlier this year and now runs in at least 41 countries across the world, although it has been banned in some places over safety concerns and fears it would strip business from licensed taxi drivers.
Meanwhile, this was all that was left of Uber’s “hot chick” promotion page today:
READ: 300 taxi drivers protest in Dublin city over ads, parking and too many taxis >
READ: Hey Uber and Hailo! There’s a new rival in town >
