Italian luxury brand Dolce & Gabbana have released another campaign which has offended Chinese consumers.
For this year’s Qixi (Chinese Valentine’s Day), they launched a campaign with two virtual female models enjoying their holiday on a beach. Chinese consumers were unimpressed with the campaign as it was unrelated to Qixi, which is a festival for lovers, and wasn’t produced specifically for the occasion.
This is not the first time the brand has upset their Chinese audience.
In 2017, they launched a campaign which was based on Chinese stereotypes which netizens thought “made China look backwards”.
In 2018, they released a video of a Chinese model attempting to eat Italian food with chopsticks which created a storm in China. As a result, D&G was banned from e-commerce platforms Tmall and JD, blogging platform Xiaohongshu and was forced to cancel its fashion show. The founders produced a video apologising; however this was to little avail as celebrities stopped working with them and the brand’s name became tarnished in China.
Despite still being banned in Tmall, D&G paid a huge sum of money (at least 1.8 million RMB) to feature its Qixi campaign on the opening page of Weibo. However, netizens spoke out against the company’s newest campaign using very strong language (滚) to express their feelings.
Do boys not celebrate Qixi?
They think we are fish with no memory
D&G have built their brand around being satirical but this has not gone down well with Chinese consumers who value the importance of respect and understanding of their culture.
D&G’s campaign comes just after luxury brand Balenciaga’s Qixi campaign was branded “tacky” by Chinese consumers.
So how can luxury markets get it right in the Chinese market? Sign up for our live event on September 2 – Luxury Brands Entering China Post-COVID19.
