BMW mows mega shitstorm over free ice cream

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BMW literally caught a cold at Auto Shanghai in China. The obstacle was the free ice cream distribution campaign held at the booth of BMW subsidiary Mini. A video on the Chinese social media platform Bilibili shows how two Chinese trade fair visitors were turned down on the grounds that there were no ice creams to hand out. But after a short while, a piece of cold happiness is given to a western-looking person.

As a result, the video made waves on Weibo, China’s largest social media network: the keyword “BMW Mini” briefly took second place in search queries with over 93 million clicks. Numerous users made angry comments about the incident, accusing Mini of discriminating and racist behavior towards Chinese trade fair visitors.

BMW apologizes

The German premium producer immediately recognized the explosive nature of the shipment: Shortly after the video went live, the company detailed a total of 300 servings of ice cream available during the two trade visitor days. An ice cream coupon was given at the mini-stand as a thank you to everyone who downloaded the mini-app. A small amount of ice cream was also reserved for the hard-working employees on the site, and probably one was handed out to the person in the video after the official quota was met. Mini apologized at the end of his statement, saying that he wanted the employees on the site to be retrained accordingly and that the incident would not be repeated.

The ice cream door for the Munich BMW group has certainly come at a bad time: the Germans are under extreme pressure in the Chinese market and are falling behind their own expectations, especially when it comes to electric car sales. 7 electric sedan in Shanghai, other European automakers, such as Volkswagen, are also feeling the increasing competition from domestic manufacturers in the important Chinese market, which is gradually taking over the technological leadership in electric vehicles.

Source: Blick