By MA Yue, YA Hanxiang
FAW Audi has been forced to issue apologies after one of its ads was found to have plagiarized a Douyin influencer.
The new commercial starring Hong Kong movie star Andy Lau was released on Saturday and quickly received five million likes. Then, Douyin influencer Beida Mange, with his four million followers, accused Audi of word-for-word plagiarism.
The commercial was Audi’s latest attempt to promote its luxury A8L sedan, priced from 858,000 yuan (US$130,000). It’s a perfectly immemorable, standard car ad. Dishy Andy Lau lolls in the backseat babbling something about ancestral wisdom while the car roams across the dreamlike Chinese countryside immersed in forgettable music.
And the script is indeed almost identical to that of a video made by Beida Mange a year ago, including a poem by him, attributed in the commercial falsely to Qing Dynasty statesman ZENG Guofan.
The next day, Audi pulled off the commercial and apologized to the influencer and Andy Lau. M&C Saatchi, the agency responsible for commercial, has apologized too. Andy Lau also apologized. Beida Mange, however, continued his live streaming on Douyin, talking about education and culture and nothing else. He did not respond to Jiemian News' inquiry on whether he will press charges or not.
While the above facts are somewhat prosaic, there is a genuine mystery as to what exactly went wrong in the making of the ad. In a screenshot widely shared online, a man named Zhang claimed to have written the copy and was “grateful for the recommendation of Ruder Finn for the job.” Jiemian News could not verify the authenticity of the post.
Ruder Finn said Audi is not their partner and the company had no part in making the ad, nor did they recommend anyone for anything.
Outsourcing is common practice among ad agencies. Consultant WANG Xiaosai said the ad industry has very few checks on this kind of content.
“There is a fine line between reference and plagiarism. It’s usually the director’s call. Outsourced writers don’t usually have much input. They just squeeze out some lines,” he said. “The agency calls the shots.”
Content creators often find it difficult, both financially and legally, to win a copyright case. Lawsuits drag on, and there are nearly a billion short video app users. By the time a creator won a case, he or she would be long forgotten.
