Hornbach - So riecht das Frühjahr / This is what spring smells like (2019) :45 (Germany)

Hornbach knows what spring smells like. It smells like sweaty men doing difficult landscaping jobs and fixing up the house. As a twist on the old urban myth that they sell school girl panties in vending machines in Japan, the sweaty musky man-working shirts - and shorts, ugh - are vacuum packed and sold in vending machines in a fictional grey urban south-east Asian country. A woman who probably hasn't seen anyone working on landscaping since forever in this city buys a bag and inhales the sweaty musky scent of spring. 

Funny. Or not, depending on your point of view. This ad upset a bunch of people who believe that the face the lady makes is inspired by a typical hentai orgasm. Yes, anime porn. And soon people accused Hornbach of being addicted to it, as well as being racists. 

Korean twitterer 굉여 who lives in Germany wonders "Why do Asian women buy sweaty clothes for white men? Because of you, I'm scared to ride the bus, S-Bahn, U-Bahn in summer."

Hornbach responded to her:

굉여 still argues that the Asian actress' facial expression is different from the blond woman and the man, while the German firm defended the commercial, tweeting that it was not racist and that it showed the “decreasing quality of life in cities”.

 

But the Korean lady insists that the facial expression the Asian actress makes is what makes the ad racist. A petition is now asking Hornbach to apologise for the ad. 

How do you feel about it?

 

Client: Hornbach

Adland® is supported by your donations alone. You can help us out by buying us a Ko-Fi coffee.
Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
comment_node_story
Files must be less than 5 MB.
Allowed file types: jpg jpeg gif png wav avi mpeg mpg mov rm flv wmv 3gp mp4 m4v.