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After a social media protest, luxury automaker Audi apologized for an advertisement showing a young woman leaning in front of the grill of one of her high-performance breaks while eating a banana.
“We sincerely apologize for this callous symbol and make sure it is no longer used in the future,” the logo said on Twitter.
Audi posted the ad on Twitter on Sunday with the legend “Let your center can hit faster, in every aspect.” Users rushed to criticize the photo, and some noted that the child is in a harmful position while in front of the car, potentially out of the driver’s sight.
“This is a terrifying image that shows that these mass-speed machines pose a danger to our young people and our societies and do not belong to the streets of the village with the young,” one person said. “It makes my abdomen turn.”
“One in thirteen child deaths is the result of a traffic collision,” tweeted the European Transport Safety Council, a non-profit organisation aimed at reducing deaths and injuries in transport.
Some critics have described the ad as sexually suggestive, showing the banana in the child’s hand as a phallic symbol. Others saw no challenge with the symbol and came here to defend Audi online.
“Just a child, ” tweeted one person. “Eat a banana. While you’re leaning on a cool car (and stopped). Nothing more, nothing less.”
Audi responded to the protest Monday, the day after the ad aired, apologizing for the symbol and promising to use the photo in long-running advertisements.
“We listen to you and explain things: we care about children,” the car manufacturer said in a tweet. “The Audi RS four is a family circle car with more than thirty drive force assist systems, adding an emergency braking system. That’s why we brought him to the circle of family members for the campaign.”
Audi also said it would investigate “how this crusade was created and whether the mechanisms failed in this case.”
Volkswagen, Audi’s sister logo as a component of the Volkswagen Group, was recently criticized for an advertisement showing a large white hand pushing a black man. Volkswagen temporarily apologized for the video and pledged to create a diversity committee that would review artistic content.