Android mobe biz OnePlus goes to the dogs - or maybe cats

The cat-video school of marketing has been used to promote OnePlus dropping its need for an invitation to buy one of its smartphones.

The cat is called Una - except it isn’t a cat, it’s a dog. Perhaps it’s been watching too many O2 adverts*.

When OnePlus launched the OnePlus One it put into place a system of invitations. If you didn’t have one you couldn’t buy the phone, instantly making it more desirable.

You might argue that this was unnecessary as the Cyanogen-powered phone was pretty desirable already.

The marketing seemed to work, however, and the company experimented by lifting the restriction for one hour.

Now OnePlus has lifted all restrictions and says it will do so “forever”. On its blog, it says: “Since the early days, our company has changed quite a lot. We’ve grown to over 700 employees and have sold over one million OnePlus Ones worldwide.”

However, it’s not quite the end of restrictions. The lifting only applies to the OnePlus One. When the new OnePlus 2 appears it will still use the invitations hypegasm.

In the video, dog Una is used to choose which special offer OnePlus should apply to get people to buy the OnePlus One. So as not to spoil the surprise we won’t tell you, but we can confidently report that what Una really prefers is dog biscuits. ®

Bootnote

For non-Blighty-based readers, O2's current ad campaign features a cat that thinks it's a dog.