Thanks to the power of the Chinese internet, one of the world's biggest companies has had to backtrack and apologise for, well, making a massive fool of itself.
This Chinese Audi commercial was stirring up outrage online for comparing women to used cars, but has since been pulled by the automotive giant amid some pretty heavy grovelling.
The commercial was apparently released back in May, but it didn’t make headlines until a Weibo post by user Lian Xia went viral this week.
Rightly so, a lot of netizens were furious. One Weibo user commented, 'This commercial is so disgusting, a big company like Audi doesn’t even have this little bit of judgment?' Another compared the mother-in-law’s actions to the way one would buy livestock, writing, 'Examining teeth??? Where is the livestock??? That this kind of thing can even appear is incredible'.
The commercial is a complete 180 from the epic ad Audi did a few months ago featuring Hao Jingfang, the first Chinese woman to win a Hugo award, which shone a light on her incredible sci-fi work, Folding Beijing.
Hao Jingfang gazes upon Beijing in her Audi ad
In any case, once the controversy hit an Audi spokesman told the South China Morning Post that Audi was looking into the matter and that its local joint venture partner handled its Chinese marketing. But still – why, Audi joint venture partner, why? We’re no strangers to horrible ads like the Qiaobi detergent ad fiasco released in 2016, but we thought we'd moved on from that crazy year.