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

Published: 10:00pm, 22 May 2022Updated: 2:09pm, 23 May 2022

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.

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”.