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Intellectual property in China
Tech

German carmaker Audi, ad agency M&C Saatchi apologise for copyright infringement in video campaign with Hong Kong’s Andy Lau

  • Audi blamed the infringement on a ‘lack of supervision and lax review’ of the M&C Saatchi-led campaign
  • M&C Saatchi said ‘weak copyright awareness’ by the company’s Audi service team led to the controversy

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Hong Kong actor Andy Lau Tak-wah also apologised for the plagiarised content used on his video ad with carmaker Audi. Photo: Handout
Ann Cao
Luxury carmaker Audi and London-based advertising agency M&C Saatchi on Sunday apologised for running a video campaign featuring Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau Tak-wah, following accusations of plagiarism that triggered an online backlash against the German firm in Chinese social media.
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A subsidiary of Volkswagen Group, Audi said it has removed the video ad from all online channels and apologised for the “copywriting [copyright] infringement”, which it blamed on a “lack of supervision and lax review” of the M&C Saatchi-led campaign, according to a statement posted by the carmaker on its official account on Chinese microblogging service Weibo.
The ad showed Lau delivering a monologue about Xiaoman – the second solar term of summer, according to the Chinese lunar calendar – on the back seat of an Audi car. That monologue’s content and the ad’s concept, however, were both lifted from an original video published a year ago on Douyin, the Chinese version of short video platform TikTok, according to a vlogger who goes by the name of “Beida Mange”.

The online influencer, who has about 4 million followers and claims to be a Peking University graduate, on Saturday accused the Audi ad of plagiarism in a seven-minute video he posted on Douyin. It provided a detailed comparison between the Audi ad and his original 2021 post, in which he explained the meaning of Xiaoman and recited poetry that he claimed was his own.

A Douyin influencer who calls himself “Beida Mange” accuses carmaker Audi’s latest video ad campaign of plagiarism. Photo: Handout
A Douyin influencer who calls himself “Beida Mange” accuses carmaker Audi’s latest video ad campaign of plagiarism. Photo: Handout

“I’ve been plagiarised many times before,” the vlogger said in his post on Douyin. “But I’ve never seen this kind [of video campaign] … in which ads are embedded from beginning to end … and copied [my] content word for word.”

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