MANY food companies and vendors turn to certain marketing tactics to draw in customers but there is no denying that certain businesses take such gimmicks too far.
A doughnut seller in Penang recently landed in hot water over their vulgar marketing which disgusted and angered netizens.
In several videos across social media, it is shown part of the doughnut seller’s gimmick is to arch his back, with his facial expression imitating sexual pleasure - and saying somewhat indecent things in front of customers.
Recently, influencer Wan Hadi spoke up against the doughnut stand’s marketing, claiming that the business was “sexualising” their food.
“What are you trying to show?
“They have no shame. Imagine, this became viral to the point that school children are starting to imitate, doesn’t matter if they are boys or girls.
“Stop normalising things like these. Do not enable this kind of (behaviour). If you are using the word ‘berayaq’ (slang for wet) to refer to your doughnuts being moist, soft or whatever else that is fine but why do you have to make that sort of expression,” he said in his TikTok video.
On X, a video of a child allegedly imitating the doughnut seller’s action went viral, raising concern amongst netizens.
X user @WVGIF, who shared the video, criticised the doughnut seller’s marketing tactic, pointing out how children can easily imitate the sexualised act without understanding why it is inappropriate.
Following the backlash, the doughnut vendor posted an apology on their TikTok account, saying that they have decided to change the name of their business to shift from the ‘berayaq’ brand.
“For your information, ‘berayaq’ just means our dough that melts and when one eats our doughnuts, it melts in their mouths and the ‘jet’ just means it has a ‘kick’ and just to let everyone know, (the word) ‘cirit’ (translation: diarrheoa) is not actually our tagline.
“As for the videos that went viral recently, it was not our idea to say these things. We were only acting as instructed,” the vendor said in their apology video.