The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2022
P&G's 'women's feet smell 5x worse' ad — apology, then a 700,000 yuan fine
P&G's WeChat ad claimed women's feet smell 5x worse than men's; it apologized in March, and a Guangzhou regulator fined it 700,000 yuan three months later.
宝洁
What happened
On March 13, 2022, Guangzhou P&G posted an ad on its official WeChat account '宝洁会员中心' titled 'Women's feet smell five times worse than men's — smell it now if you don't believe it' (女人的脚臭是男人的5倍？不信现在闻一下). The copy claimed women's feet smell five times worse than men's, their body odor is strongest at the chest, and even clean women's underwear is dirtier than men's — all in service of selling a 'whole-body fragrance' five-piece set.
Netizens called the article insulting to women and it spread widely across media. On March 24, P&G China apologized through its official Weibo: it sincerely apologized for the article's disrespectful content toward women, said the article had been deleted, and promised a serious rectification of the account's operations.
The fine arrived three months later. The administrative penalty decision found the ad had run from March 13 to 24, drawing extensive media coverage and significant social impact. Because P&G had proactively corrected itself — deleting the ad, closing the official account and cooperating with the investigation — the Huangpu district market regulator in Guangzhou ordered it to stop publishing the illegal ad and fined it 700,000 yuan.
Why it happened
- Pseudo-science: '5 times worse' and bacterial 'reproduction rates' dressed discrimination as data, and the punchline was a product to buy — the ad's selling point was insulting its own customer.
- The audience was the target: 宝洁会员中心's readers are mostly the women the copy demeaned, so the article performed insult and sales in a single gesture.
- The apology was fast: deleting the article and rectifying the account within days kept damage to image, but the ad had already run twelve days and the penalty decision still cited the media storm.
- 700,000 yuan is pocket change for P&G, yet the regulator's verdict — not the apology — was the story that stuck, which is what a false-advertising penalty is really for.
The lesson
Pseudo-science ads trade discrimination for reach; the fine arrives anyway. The apology was fast, but the regulator's 700,000-yuan verdict, not the apology, was the ending.
Sources
- 澎湃新闻（原发中新经纬）— 'P&G fined 700,000 yuan: women's-foot-odor ad violated the Advertising Law', 2022-06-27
- 观察者网 — 'P&G China apologizes after WeChat article criticized as insulting women', 2022-03-24
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