As companies and federal agencies dusted off their pride logos for the month of June, BMW was no exception—in the West, that is.
Responding to a post about “the new BMW M3 Competition Touring with M xDrive,” which published on June 1, an X user wanted to know why the BMW Middle East social media account did not share the same rainbow version of its logo.
Surprisingly, the company responded.
“This is an established practice at the BMW Group, which also takes into consideration market-specific legal regulations and country-specific cultural aspects,” BMW replied.
So, in other words, you are just pandering for a month.
— Dan Stilwell (@realdanstilwell) June 2, 2024
"We're visibly pro-LGBT except where it's unpopular to be visibly pro-LGBT" sure is a thing to publicly admit to doing on your corporate social media account. https://t.co/ciEDBaCqwR
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) June 2, 2024
Cultural aspects, you say?
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) June 2, 2024
So it's fine to rub "pride month" in the face of Americans, but you want to respect the boundaries of Muslims in the Middle East. Cool, cool, cool. https://t.co/VenUcnO9QR
Amazing to see a massive corporation admit they’re only care about specific groups of people when it’s culturally permissive
— Ian Miller (@ianmSC) June 2, 2024
Shows you how deeply held their “values” actually are https://t.co/C6x7nscSju
'We're happy to plaster rainbows anywhere we think the virtue signal may be profitable'. https://t.co/6iX1rxhkPr pic.twitter.com/loWpxT12Al
— Jack David (@FFS_WhatNow) June 2, 2024
As a lesbian, I would prefer you don’t pretend to take a moral stance on my human rights that is dependent on market conditions. Just drop the flag and go sell some cars.
— Ani O'Brien (@aniobrien) June 2, 2024
As X account Libs of TikTok highlighted, BMW is hardly the only company that changes its logo for its Western markets, but not Middle Eastern ones.
Every. Single. Year. This will never not be funny pic.twitter.com/BVj40itRxs
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 2, 2024