JD.com apologises for sexist marketing campaign as Singles’ Day shopping event nears
- The e-commerce giant’s JD Beauty business unit caused an uproar in Chinese social media for a sexist tagline on boxes shipped to customers
JD.com, China’s second largest e-commerce company, has apologised for a business unit’s sexist marketing campaign, which sparked an outcry among social media users more than a week before the country’s annual Singles’ Day, the world’s biggest shopping event.
The newly established JD Beauty ran a campaign in which about 300,000 express boxes for the cosmetics products sold on the online retail platform were printed with the tagline: “Without lipstick, how are you different from a man?”
About 1,000 express boxes with that tagline were recently shipped and received by customers, according to JD Beauty.
It promised on Tuesday to replace those boxes and provide an undisclosed beauty product as compensation to the customers who received the package, following an uproar on popular microblogging service Weibo.
“How can such a sexist ad come with the products from such a big company,” one Weibo user posted on Tuesday. Another Weibo user said: “Please show your respect to women. The ad discriminates against women who do not wear make-up.”
Although its business was still “in a development stage”, JD Beauty owned up to its mistake, saying in a statement that the campaign was “inappropriate” and showed a misguided approach to engaging customers.