A laundry detergent ad has just been released in China and it is causing all sorts of controversy world wide. The ad, which tries to emulate a woman meeting the man of her dreams, turns out to be extremely racially insensitive.
The advert begins with an Asian woman doing her laundry, when an African American man, who is supposedly there to paint her house, starts flirting with her. The girl teases him by ushering him over towards her. He does so, excitedly. Upon face-to-face, she pops a laundry detergent pod in his mouth and shoves him in the laundry machine. After the wash cycle is complete, the guy comes out a light-skinned Asian man that the woman finds irresistible.
Of course, we all have our own taste in men or women, but… really China? It’s hard to understand how the master minds behind this advert could not see how racially insensitive it is.
Comments have been streaming in swiftly. “My god,” wrote one user on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. “Don’t Chinese marketing people get any education about race?” Another user says, “If you don’t understand why it’s racist, congratulations, you’re a racist”.
This is not the first time that an Asian country has come under fire for a racist action or remark. In fact, a company in Thailand advertised their beauty product by saying, “Just by being white, you will win”. The ad was removed and the company had to make a public apology. Let’s see what happens to this ad!
