German car manufacturer Audi has been criticised in China for running an advert comparing a bride-to-be to a used car.
The company has been widely slammed on Chinese social media for the recently aired advert for an approved second hand Audi dealer.
The advert depicts a woman at the altar being given the once over by a pedantic mother.
As the ad ends the text reads: “An important decision must be made carefully” while directing viewers to a site where used cars can be bought.
The controversial commercial was removed from official online Audi channels, but copies of the ad went viral on Chinese social media.
One copied video, posted on popular Chinese video sharing website QQ, has been viewed over 50 million times.
Thousands of Chinese social media users also took to the microblogging site Weibo to slam the car manufacturer.
Netizen Hui Zijun wrote: “I've never seen such low advertising. I don't know how this program was approved.”
“Audi Public Relations and the Great Wall are making the same mistakes. You think that deleting the video will solve the problem? The more you want to hide, the more you cannot, hiding it is worse than telling the public about your real advertising ideas,” another user, Lan Xiaohei said.
Another user with the acronym "Dangling Little Bamboo" commented on the video saying, "he marries his wife but has to have an examination and inspection by his mother, the groom is fairly incompetent, looks like audi's target market are chauvinists and mama's boys."
Speaking to the South China Morning Post, an Audi spokesman said that the matter is currently under investigation, and that Audi’s marketing campaign in China was the responsibility of its local joint venture partner.