Indonesia's regulator pulled Shopee's Blackpink ad over 'skimpy' outfits — mid-campaign

In December 2018, Shopee, Southeast Asia's biggest online marketplace, was promoting its 12.12 birthday sale in Indonesia with a television commercial featuring the South Korean girl group Blackpink. In it, the four members sang and danced in short dresses. The ad was part of a single regional campaign; versions of it ran in other countries. In Indonesia, it ran straight into the country's broadcasting decency rules.

A petition accused the ad of being 'vulgar,' saying the outfits did not even cover the thighs and were 'far from Pancasila values,' and gathered more than 100,000 signatures. On 11 December, the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission, the KPI, sent warning letters to 11 television stations, saying the commercial showed women 'singing and dancing while wearing little clothing' and potentially violated the rule that programs must 'adhere to decency and morality norms upheld by the public.' A KPI commissioner warned of sanctions for anything similar.

Shopee's first response noted, a little defensively, that the ad 'had been granted permission from the KPI' and that it would always follow regulations. It then replaced the commercial with a new 12.12 version. The episode cut both ways: a counter-petition defending the ad drew tens of thousands of signatures, and most of the hundreds of replies to the KPI's own announcement denounced the decision as unfair. A sale campaign had become an argument about censorship, modesty and who gets to decide.