One of the most powerful and popular Sweden-based retail stores H&M has made an apology for one of their racist advertisements. The ad featured a hoodie that said “coolest monkey in the jungle” being modeled by a black child. It was brought to attention to H&M after blowing up on social media, being their top online sale in the U.K.

They did a public apology by saying, “We sincerely apologize for offending people with this image of a printed hooded top.” H&M also mentioned in a statement, “The image has been removed from all online channels and the product will not be for sale in the United States.We believe in diversity and inclusion in all that we do and will be reviewing all our internal policies accordingly to avoid any future issues.”

Ethnic and racial insensitivity is serious. If H&M needs to be criticized like this to learn their lesson, then so be it. However, H&M is a gigantic corporation and I’m pretty sure they know what they’re doing when it comes to marketing techniques.

To me it looks as if  making the black community speak out after being angered by controversial marketing overall helps the business by making the items trend. Although people are speaking about it in a negative way, nobody really stops buying the product. Also, one may go on the website to look at the hoodie being talked about and then start looking at other items. Once they see something that catches their eye, there goes one more sale for H&M.

Even if H&M didn’t intend to insult any group of people, they still need to be less ignorant and more sensitive in their marketing.