Hornbach's 'Smell of Spring' ad had an Asian woman sniff white men's dirty laundry

On 15 March 2019, German home-improvement chain Hornbach released 'The Smell of Spring,' an ad made with agency Heimat, showing white men gardening outdoors, working up a sweat and discarding their dirty clothes into a box. The scene cut to a grey, Tokyo-like city where an Asian woman buys the bag of used clothing, opens it, and sighs with pleasure.

East Asian women, led by South Korean commentators, said the ad relied on fetishizing stereotypes of Asian women as submissive and sexually available, evoking used-underwear vending-machine tropes. A change.org petition and formal protest letters — including from the South Korean Cultural Center in Germany — demanded removal, an investigation and a diversity report.

Hornbach initially defended the ad publicly as commentary on 'decreasing quality of life in cities,' not racism. Facing sustained pressure and the risk of formal regulatory action, the company pulled the commercial from German TV, online and cinema use starting 15 April 2019 — a month after release — though it left the video and existing links live on some social channels.