Several not Kosher posts of Bvlgari’s CNY campaign provoked Jews

To celebrate the Chinese new year of Pig and to resonate more with the culture, Bvlgari’s greeting post on WeChat account applied a wordplay strategy, in which “pearl”, “bamboo” and “condition” these “pig” sounding characters in Chinese were replaced with their homophonic English word “JEW” – yes, exactly the one to describe the group of people who believed in Judaism. The pun provoked some Jewish people on the internet as it built an indirect link to their forbidden animal, which is very not Kosher. Bvlgari soon withdrew the post without any explanation or official statement, and left people wondering if it’s just another case of unintentional cultural insensitivity. However, the guessed intention of “JEW” was to shorten “jewelry”.