Chinese authorities have fined a company the equivalent of about $120,000 over an advertisement it created for American chocolate brand Dove that featured a woman in a “situationship,” saying on Thursday it promoted the “wrong views on marriage and relationships.”
The video, first posted online in August, showed a woman getting chocolates from a man with whom she was in a “situationship” after her boyfriend ignored her.
The clip caused a stir online in China, with some social media users saying it promoted infidelity, prompting Dove to issue an apology.
Zongzheng Food — the company that created the ad and that operates a Dove store on Chinese e-commerce platform Kuaishou — was fined 800,000 yuan ($120,000) last month, Shanghai authorities said on Thursday.
The ad “packaged being unfaithful in a relationship as a ‘sweet experience,’ promoting wrong views on marriage and relationships and violating good social customs,” the Shanghai Municipal Market Supervision Administration said in a statement.
China is facing a demographic crisis after its birth rate halved over the past decade, and in response authorities have heavily promoted traditional family structures.
Marriage registrations from January to September were down 9.8% year-over-year, reaching just 4.6 million, data from China’s civil affairs ministry showed last week.
Dove, which is owned by McLean, Virginia-based Mars Inc., said in its apology in August that the ad didn’t follow its content review process and was “clearly inappropriate.”
Dove “bears responsibility” for all content posted to its official channels, the chocolate brand said on social media platform Weibo.
Chinese authorities have previously rebuked companies for platforming romantic relationships deemed inappropriate.
In May, Chinese consumer electronics company OPPO said it “severely punished” multiple executives over an ad joking about infidelity, which authorities publicly condemned.
