The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2025
Swatch ran a 'slanted eye' ad, apologized in a day — resale prices fell anyway
Swatch pulled a global ad showing a model making a 'slanted eye' gesture after China backlash in August 2025; secondhand watch prices fell about 12%.
Swatch Group · 2025-08-16
What happened
On August 15, 2025, Swatch published promotional images for its Essentials collection showing an Asian male model pulling the corners of his eyes up and back — a gesture widely read in China as mimicking a racist taunt about Asian eye shape. The images went out on Swatch's own global channels, not a regional campaign.
The hashtag #Swatch眯眯眼 (Swatch slanted-eye) drew more than 50 million views on Weibo within a day, and a 'reject cultural bullying' petition gathered over 100,000 signatures. Swatch apologized in Chinese and English on Weibo and Instagram the next evening, saying it had 'taken note of the recent concerns' and removed the material worldwide, without further detail on how the images had been approved.
The timing compounded the damage: Swatch Group, which also owns Omega, Longines and Tissot, drew about 27% of its prior year's sales from China, Hong Kong and Macau, and had just reported an 11.2% year-on-year sales decline in the first half of 2025 that it attributed largely to weakness in the China market. Chinese secondhand-market watch prices fell roughly 12% on average after the ad, with limited-edition collaboration pieces losing their resale premium entirely.
Why it happened
- A gesture with a well-documented history as an anti-Asian racist taunt reached a global publish button without anyone in the approval chain flagging it.
- The apology named no cause and gave no explanation of how the image was approved, reading as a template response rather than an accounting.
- A watchmaker already drawing over a quarter of sales from China, already reporting a China-driven sales decline, had the least room to absorb a self-inflicted controversy there.
The lesson
A same-day apology stops the immediate bleeding but doesn't answer the question that actually matters to a market you depend on: how did this get approved, and what changes so it doesn't happen again.
Aftermath
Swatch removed the campaign globally within about 24 hours of the backlash peaking. Secondhand market data showed lasting price effects on Swatch and collaboration pieces. The episode was covered by SCMP, CNN, BoF and Chinese financial press within the same week, and became one of several China-market marketing controversies cited in Swatch Group's weak 2025 results commentary.
Sources
- Watchmaker Swatch apologizes for 'slanted eye' ad after online backlash in China — CNN (Aug 18, 2025)
- Swatch says sorry for 'slant eye' ad after social media backlash in China — South China Morning Post
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