On March 24, Procter & Gamble China's official Weibo posted "Women's feet stink 5 times that of men, don't believe it!" apologies. Because of its alleged insult to women, the topic of "P&G apologizes" rushed to the top of the Sina Weibo hot search yesterday afternoon.
"Procter & Gamble apologizes" Sina Weibo hot search no. 1 (image from Sina Weibo screenshot)
Procter & Gamble China apologizes, netizens: Is this the first time?
According to netizens, on March 13, the public account of the Procter & Gamble Member Center published an article "Women's foot odor is 5 times that of men, don't believe it!" 》。 The article said, "9 of the 10 men stink, and women stink 5 times as much as men!" "The rate of bacterial reproduction in men's feet is 400%, but for women it is 2300%." The article also claimed that women also had body odor, and that their breasts were the most smelly. Even said that women's smell after exercise, even durian + snail powder + stinky tofu can not compare!
P&G Member Center official account published a screenshot of the content
After this article was issued, it quickly triggered heated discussion among netizens. Netizens said: "If you are really serious about science popularization, please send experimental data for comparison, instead of writing articles with these inflammatory tones and techniques, what is more smelly than durian snail powder stinky tofu?" Some netizens questioned: "If there is no data support, is this a rumor?" Is it illegal? ”
Screenshot of netizen comments
For this article, on March 24, Procter & Gamble China said on Sina Weibo that it solemnly apologized for the inappropriate content of a recent article on the P&G Member Center account for disrespecting women. At the same time, it also said that P&G has always promoted the values of equality, inclusion and respect. "We have deleted this article and seriously rectified the operation of this account. We will reflect deeply and prevent similar situations from happening again. ”
Procter & Gamble apologized on Sina Weibo
Future Network reporters check the P&G Member Center public number, the article has been deleted.
As for the insulting women's articles in Procter & Gamble China, Zhou Yong, a professor at Shanghai Business School and director of the Senior Advisory Group of Lianshang, said in an interview with the Future Network reporter: "This is contempt for regulations, contempt for the public, and contempt for consumers!" This is also a kind of degeneration of big brand enterprises! ”
So, as a well-known brand, why does Procter & Gamble China have such an incident of insulting women, the famous economist Song Qinghui said in an interview with the future network reporter, there may be two reasons. First, the account operation is not serious enough, and it will do whatever it takes to pursue traffic. The second is that it does not really put women's dignity in mind, highlighting the brand's consistent arrogant attitude.
According to the future network reporter, Procter & Gamble has many familiar brands, such as Bangbaoshi, Piaorou, Haifeisi, Crest, Tide, Bilang, Hushubao, Pantene, Shufujia, Olay, SK-II and so on.
In fact, Procter & Gamble China apologized, and some netizens realized that this is not the first time.
According to the Shanghai Youth Daily, in 2005, procter & Gamble's SK-II brand was punished by the Industrial and Commercial Bureau of Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province, for suspected false publicity, and then the SK-II brand apologized to consumers. According to Beijing Business Daily, in November 2018, P&G apologized to consumers for the problem of empty boxes in its products and promised to solve it properly.
Last year, Guangzhou Procter & Gamble Co., Ltd. also made a misleading commercial publicity on the product's outer packaging for "removing 99% bacteria" that was not fully scientifically demonstrated, so that it was in a favorable position to produce and sell "Shufujia TM Lemon Qing New Soap" and similar products when competing, harming the legitimate rights and interests of other operators. He was eventually fined 200,000 yuan by the Pingdingshan Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau and ordered to stop the illegal acts.
Brand insults to women occur frequently
In addition to the incidents of insulting women at Procter & Gamble, there are many well-known brands that have also had similar incidents.
In 2020, a RT-Mart store posted a poster that arranged women's clothing sizes from small to large, describing S codes as "thin", M codes as "beautiful", L codes as "rotten", XL codes as "sparse", and XXL codes as "sparse". This kind of wording caused heated discussion after netizens broke the news, on Weibo hot search, RT-Mart also issued an apology announcement, saying that it will strengthen internal management to ensure that such incidents do not happen again, and such an apology is not accepted by the majority of netizens, some netizens said that such an apology did not show sincerity.
RT-Mart women's clothing poster (picture from netizen Weibo screenshot)
Last year, the cotton era also exploded on the Internet for insulting women, and was accused by netizens. In order to promote a makeup remover wipes, it released a video advertisement, the advertisement is basically a girl walking alone at night when the man in black tailing, in order to get rid of the man's tailgating, the girl has a clever move, and stopped to take out a box of makeup remover wipes from the bag to remove makeup. At this time, the trailing man also touched her shoulder, the girl turned back, has instantly removed the makeup "ugly", the trailing man was frightened to make a vomiting sound, the girl was able to get out of danger. Netizens were very dissatisfied with the advertisement of the cotton era, believing that it was an insult to women.
In this regard, the All-China Women's Federation organ newspaper "China Women's Daily" commented that women are consumers rather than consumer goods, and it is inevitable that "creative" advertisements that insult women will be criticized by public opinion. "Such a serious and vicious incident concerning women's safety has been lightly used by merchants to glorify the perpetrators and vilify the victims with the so-called 'creativity' as a rhetoric, full of prejudice, malice and ignorance."
For this ad, Cotton Times responded that the video was an ad creative and only used as a cleaning function to highlight the product. At the same time, he showed respect and love for every woman and apologized.
Apologies from the Cotton Times (Image from Sina Weibo screenshot)
Also last year, the well-known tea brand Cha Yan Yue Color Copywriter was accused of insulting women and was on Weibo's hot search. Its mug is written in Changsha slang "picking up the basket", and the caption: "There are many beautiful women who come to chayan to buy milk tea, if you happen to know one, you can whisper to our little friend, I picked up a 'basket'." In addition, netizens also exposed more of its products with inappropriate copywriting. Subsequently, Cha Yan Yue also apologized for the adverse impact of his product copywriting.
Cha Yan Yue Xie apologized (image from Sina Weibo screenshot)
So, why are there frequent incidents of corporate insults against women?
"The root cause lies in the idea of male superiority and female inferiority in the bones of the enterprise, which believes that women's status is always lower than that of men." Song Qinghui believes that "to this day, the repeated incidents of insulting women are heart-wrenching, highlighting the long way to go to achieve equality between men and women. ”
Zhou Yong said that in addition to beingware of touching the legal bottom line, enterprises should also beware of touching the ethical bottom line. Although the law does not stipulate that it cannot be done, every industry should have an industry bottom line. At the same time, we must also beware of the bottom line of public opinion, enterprises can not "offend the public anger", public opinion also represents a kind of cognition, who deviates from positive energy public opinion, who will "overturn the ship", can not lose compliance, ethics, and sociality for the sake of traffic.
"Now, there is a serious tendency to get traffic and revenue as long as you win the eyeballs, so marketing that challenges conscience and the bottom line is constantly emerging." Liang Chunni, as a woman, said to the future network reporter.
Another woman, Jiang Huihui, had a similar view in an interview with the Future Network reporter: "Publishers know that marketing article copywriting is sensitive, but they feel more in need of eyeballs and are willing to take risks to win huge traffic." Therefore, there is a phenomenon that the 'title party' attracts traffic and the content 'sword goes sideways'. ”
As a brand, what kind of impact will the insult of women have on the company? Song Qinghui believes that this will bring a huge negative impact on the brand, to a certain extent, it will affect its brand image in people's minds for a long time, and then it may have a subtle adverse impact on the stock price and market value in its capital market.
In order to avoid the recurrence of such incidents, Song Qinghui suggested that on the one hand, enterprises need to correct the three views and avoid discriminating against women's advertising ideas, storylines and plots. On the other hand, it is necessary to avoid touching on sensitive topics, resulting in unwarranted breeding of negative public opinion. Only in this way can we win the recognition of the majority of consumers.
For enterprises and brands that insult women, Zhou Yong believes that the government and industry associations should reprimand and punish them. "Now the respect of enterprises to consumers is not only the process of providing goods and services, consumers are actually members of enterprises, especially well-known enterprises, and they should especially prevent 'arrogance'."
Other hotspots
Author | Future Network trainee reporter Song Zipeng
Review | Guoning
Final Review | Song Guanghui
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