Beida Mange, an internet celebrity and the original author involved in Audi’s advertising plagiarism, said on Wednesday morning that he had licensed his work to Audi for free, noting that commercial appeal was not his goal, and he hopes the incident can make people pay more attention to original content.

He added that the heads of both Audi and the advertising agency made in-person apology, which he was willing to accept.

Mange also clarified the originality of the poem in the ad video, saying that the first line of the poem was indeed a quote from great Chinese writer and thinker Zeng Guofan's original content, but the next three lines were written by himself.

On Saturday, FAW-Volkswagen Audi released a new ad video on Chinese social platform in which famous Hong Kong star Andy Lau introduced the traditional Chinese solar term Xiaoman (grain buds), which had attracted pubic attention for its creative content.

However, a netizen naming “Beida Mange” said that the ad was allegedly copied from a video he made on May 21, 2021. 

One day later, Audi, together with the London-based ad agency M&C Saatchi, which is in charge of video content, issued an apology and removed the video from its official social media platforms.

Global Times