Marketing controversies—Dolce & Gabbana’s China campaign Eating with Chopsticks

Abstract

Abstract In early November 2018, the Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana (D&G), founded by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, posted a campaign video Eating with Chopsticks (qi kuai chifan 起筷吃饭) on Instagram, Twitter, and Chinese Weibo (微博) for its forthcoming Great Shanghai Show. This video spurred anger in China. Netizens boycotted the brand nationwide. The Show in Shanghai was forced to cancel, the brands’ stores in China were surrounded by protesters, and the brands’ products were pulled down from the virtual shelves of major Chinese e-commerce platforms. This paper analyzes the meaning and influence of the video Eating with Chopsticks and a series of campaigns and fashion shows that the brand promoted from 2015 to 2019 on Twitter, Instagram, and Weibo. It experiments an interdisciplinary approach to the issues of gender, cultural, and racial discriminations, using literature from gender studies, cultural studies, media studies, consumer studies, and marketing studies.