Xiaomi Apologizes For Using ‘Atomic Bomb’ Smartphone Ad In Japan

Karamchand Rameshwar - May 14, 2020

Xiaomi's commercial used to promote the Redmi Note 9 in Japan backfired as it featured two things that are highly inappropriate in Japan.

Recently, Xiaomi was caught up in a new scandal, causing the company to post a public apology post in Japan after a commercial to promote its smartphone involved imagery refers to the Second World War nuclear attacks on Japan.

Specifically, the commercial below was shared by Xiaomi in order to promote its newly-launched Redmi Note 9 Pro. However, the way the brand uses illustrations and names has caused backlash among people, especially Japanese users.

As you can see in the above video, the Chinese brand used some "inappropriate" words and phrases, such as the image of a nuclear bomb exploding as well as a "fat man" that looks like a giant white balloon.

Xiaomi Japan Nuclear Bomb — Maybe Xiaomi's marketing team needs to do a bit of research when making commercial in Japan.

For those of you who don't know, "Fat Man" is the codename for a nuclear bomb used by the United States to ravage the city of Nagasaki during World War II in 1945. The image of the giant black and white ball in the video makes many users think of nuclear bombs of similar design.

Xiaomi Japan Apology — With the backlash from the public, Xiaomi Japan immediately released a public apology on Twitter.

“We included content in this campaign that was inappropriate,” the statement reads. “We will strive to prevent this from recurring in the future.”

This is not the first time Xiaomi has faced heavy criticism from public opinion. Just recently, Xiaomi's vice president, Mr. Chang Cheng (former vice president at Lenovo) made misleading and vulgar statements when he took the example of a female student in her dormitory to emphasize the ability of the Mi 10 Youth's 50x periscopic zoom camera, suggesting the possibility of observing female students’ dormitories.

Xiaomi Vp — Mr. Chang Cheng, vice president of Xiaomi, made a very inappropriate joke to promote the brand's Xiaomi Mi 10 Youth.

Chang Cheng soon had to publicly apologize for the joke and proceeded to donate RMB 100,000 (around Rs. 10,60,000) to charity. His apology continues to be the subject of discussion on Weibo with over 400 million views and 16,000 comments.

Perhaps Xiaomi will have a more strict system in creating marketing content because even a careless sentence or a "sensitive" image is enough for Xiaomi to be caught in a similar scandal.

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