In July 2026 an entertainment blogger with 530,000 followers, 阿磊日记, published a MINISO promotional video. One scene billed 'after home floor renovation, the owner can peek at the downstairs female resident' — a man upstairs spying into a woman's bedroom below.
Netizens and other creators rounded on it. A creator criticised it for turning peeping at a woman's private space into entertainment and traffic-bait; commenters said they felt 'deeply offended' and asked whether the brand reads scripts before paying for them. The creator deleted the peeping scenes.
MINISO's own response stayed thin: customer service said it would report the matter to the relevant department for verification. Delivering a voyeuristic selling point through an external KOL, then leaving the apology to a customer-service line, kept the boycott running.
The brand let a KOL post a voyeuristic scene, then left the apology to customer service, keeping the boycott running.
The script turned a woman's privacy — a man peeping at a downstairs neighbour's bedroom — into a selling point for a retail brand's promo.
A KOL post with 530,000 followers went out with no brand-side review of the storyline before it ran.
The response was thin: a customer-service line that it would 'report to the relevant department' did nothing to stem the boycott.
Deleting the scenes only after the backlash proved the vetting had already failed at the point where it mattered.
A promo that turns a woman's bedroom into a peep-hole gag is a brand decision, not a creator's. When vetting lets it through and the apology is a customer-service line, the boycott is earned.
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE