An ad campaign for Mother’s Day that suggested Chinese mothers should spend the holiday washing laundry has gotten one of the country’s most popular detergent brands into controversy this week.
Underneath the tagline “Make laundry easier, more effortless, and more worry-free for mom” and “Mom, you use it first,” posters advertising Blue Moon‘s washing powder include silhouettes of women performing a variety of domestic tasks.
The posters were placed in apartment buildings and lifts around China by Blue Moon, a well-known Chinese brand with sales in the billions of yuan. Their purpose was to promote a special livestream sales event that was scheduled for Saturday.
However, the corporation was soon inundated with criticism as social media users panned the campaign for its sexist content and made fun of the company for failing to include women’s perspectives.
On the microblogging site Weibo, a commenter questioned, “It’s Mother’s Day, and you still want moms to do housework?” One user even went so far as to suggest rerunning the advertisement on Father’s Day to alleviate dad’s washing troubles.
Some users went so far as to publish images of themselves defacing Blue Moon posters in their apartment complexes and then send those images to the corporation. “Housework isn’t a gift, men can also do laundry.” is a handwritten tagline partially obscured by a sticker on one poster. Another features a billboard with the motto: “Mom is not a nanny, housework is the responsibility of every family member.”
The subject had gone viral on Weibo by Monday, with an associated hashtag reaching over 12 million views.
In a statement released in response to the uproar on Tuesday, Blue Moon emphasised that the company “has always advocated that housework should be shared by the whole family.” Some people felt the corporation had not offered a genuine apology, and this prompted further criticisms in response to the message. Since then, the statement has been removed.
The business chose to respond more radically on Wednesday. It stated that it would be pulling the ads and holding a contest to choose a new marketing tagline. Customers were invited to submit suggestions via the social platform Xiaohongshu, with the winners receiving a 100,000 yuan ($13,800) prize.
The following day, the ten chosen slogans were revealed. Photos of the new posters displayed near people’s houses have been shared online since their publication. Everything problematic, including the original slogans and silhouettes of women performing housework, has now been removed.
Others have pointed out that the new phrase “Machine wash, hand wash, supreme wash, no need for mum to wash by hand” suggests that women are still expected to do the laundry, which is a critique of the new posters.
The degree to which Blue Moon will be impacted by the consequences of the advertising campaign is uncertain. From 2009 to 2021, the firm’s laundry detergent had the largest market share in China, but its popularity has declined in recent years. The company was founded in 1992.
The accusation against sexist advertising by Blue Moon is not limited to any one Chinese brand. Using the phrase “Every working mother owes her child an apology,” the Shanghai-based coffee producer Banhetian faced intense criticism in 2022.
One restaurant chain in eastern Anhui province, Daobanxiang, has gotten under the skin of its female customers for doing things like giving moms who dine there complimentary aprons and using the tagline “Mom, I’m hungry,” which many have said reinforces the idea that women should be the ones to provide food for their families.
Commercials in China that portray new home improvement items as a “gift” to women are causing quite a stir. According to Song Meijie, a researcher at the School of Communication at Fujian Normal University, new technologies frequently serve only to mask the extent to which women are exploited in domestic work.
“Women’s perception of their role in the family is changing,” Sun Wei, a brand marketing consultant at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, told domestic media. “In the current era of egalitarianism, more young women believe that housework should be divided equally between both partners.”
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