On May 21, when the solar term was full, Audi released an advertising film about the philosophy of life by well-known artist Andy Lau, which was called “the ceiling of automobile advertising” for a time. It spread quickly and won a lot of praise.
But after the advertisement became popular quickly, it fell into a wave of plagiarism. On the night of May 21, man ge of Peking University, who has more than 3million Tiktok fans, released the video “what is the experience of copying a copy that has been broadcast for billions of dollars”. The video proved that Audi’s advertising copy is almost identical and copied throughout through word for word comparison. As soon as the clarification video came out, public opinion again focused on Audi. Audi’s “two-level reversal” in one day became the hot search headlines of major media platforms on May 22.
In fact, not only Audi, but also Rolls Royce, Infiniti, Changan Ford and other auto enterprises have experienced marketing “rollover” events. Behind the incident, what should be paid more attention to is that the automobile brand needs a correct and reasonable marketing concept. After all, the “brand personality” is more important than traffic and hot spots.
Audi and advertising companies apologized for the “plagiarism” incident, and Andy Lau “deeply regretted”
The reason why Audi’s advertising film can quickly become popular is because of its “high-level sense”. Different from the popularity of “520” by other enterprises, this advertising film contains cultural heritage and humanistic feelings. Although it is an advertising of car enterprises, it does not talk about cars. The whole article is about Andy Lau’s life philosophy of “Xiaoman”. An advertising film does not have too many commercial elements or even specific brand implantation. Andy Lau’s “advanced and restrained” life monologue is effectively integrated with Audi’s enterprising and ready brand attitude, which can better reflect the brand tone, so it has won countless compliments.
This is a successful marketing case, which can even be called the marketing model of automobile enterprises, but because of plagiarism, it not only stands in the outlet of public opinion, but also may bear legal responsibility. After the incident fermented, Audi officials quickly issued a statement and apologized on May 22.
After Audi apologized, at noon on May 22, advertising company M & csaatchi also issued a statement admitting plagiarism and apologizing, and promised to do its best to make up for the loss to the original author.
At about 16:00 on May 22, Andy Lau issued a document at the official support association app Huazai Tiandi, saying: I have 100% respect for the original. In this event, I personally deeply regret the problems of the advertising team in the creative process and the trouble caused to brother man. Audi and advertising companies are now seriously dealing with it.
Zhang Xiang, a researcher at the automotive industry innovation research center of Northern University of technology and MBA tutor, told the Huaxia times that the Audi marketing rollover was basically caused by the improper balance between marketing costs and risks. There may be a project budget problem behind the Audi marketing event. The cost is mainly used to invite Andy Lau, a king level spokesperson, so that the budget for the creative part is not much. Another reason is that the project has time node requirements, so that creative personnel do not have much time to do original design. Secondly, there is the problem of incomplete review process of relevant leaders.
As of press time, the incident ended temporarily with an apology statement issued by Andy Lau, Audi and its creative agency M & C Saatchi, but the subsequent impact of the incident is far from over.
Zhang Hong, Secretary General of the new energy branch of China Automobile Circulation Association, said: “if the rollover incident is not handled properly, it will even affect the subsequent marketing of Audi and the sales of relevant models in the later stage.”
automobile enterprises should pay attention to “brand personality” in marketing
In fact, this is not the first time Audi has overturned in marketing publicity.
On November 13, 2019, Audi launched the advertising of Audi Q8 in the wechat circle of friends, but the video content was an Infiniti promotional film. Although the “Oolong incident” did not cause much public opinion storm, it was ridiculed by netizens as “this is the scene of a large rollover”; In August 2020, Audi released an advertisement on the social network, in which a little girl in a short skirt, sunglasses and bananas leaned against the car. The picture immediately caused great controversy after it was released at that time. It was accused of “sexual hint” and other contents. Under the pressure of public opinion, Audi responded, apologized and said it would not be used in the future.
According to the statistics of the reporter of Huaxia times, it is not only Audi, but also car enterprises’ marketing rollover events have become common in recent years. In September 2021, Rolls Royce’s official microblog released a promotion video, inviting Chen Zhen, a famous car critic, and the “late night” couple to test drive. After the release of the video, it quickly aroused heated discussion, with nearly 10000 comments, but most of them were voices of doubt and criticism. The spearhead was directed at the “late” couple who were popular on the Internet, which was inconsistent with the tune of Rolls Royce. On October 14, Rolls Royce responded, saying that Rolls Royce Greater China “took this incident seriously, listened to everyone’s feedback sincerely, and decided to take the video offline.”
On May 18, 2021, Changan Ford released a video on its official microblog with the accompanying text: “is it true that boys run at high speed and lift girls’ skirts in Japanese animation? Today, with the help of white skirts and little sisters, it reproduces the classic scene of Riman!” The copy also has topic labels such as “feast your eyes” and so on. As soon as the microblog was issued, it boarded the hot search and caused controversy among netizens that the content was too vulgar. At noon that day, the official wechat of Changan Ford deleted the controversial content and apologized, “it will not be an example and strictly abide by the correct concept of network content. Thank you for your supervision and correction!”
On December 16, 2021, Infiniti qx60 went public, announced that its spokesman was Wang Leehom, and invited Wang Leehom to attend the press conference. But one day later, Wang Leehom was exposed by his ex-wife Li Lianglei. Infiniti responded quickly. Just two hours later, it issued a statement that it decided to terminate its cooperative relationship with Leehom Wang with immediate effect. The incident was ridiculed by netizens: “the shortest spokesman in history was born, and the endorsement time is less than 24 hours.”
It is not difficult to find that in addition to plagiarism, the “rollover accident” caused by the marketing of novelty hunting and hot spots has also become a common phenomenon. If enterprises want to rely on new media promotion and marketing, they cannot turn a blind eye to the risk of public opinion. After each “rollover”, the most common process is for brands and enterprises to issue an apology statement, get off the shelf and publicize the content, and finally express introspection, but what we really need to pay attention to is how to avoid such incidents from happening again.
Zhang Xiang said: “In recent years, due to the repeated epidemic, the publicity of automobile enterprises has been limited, and the development trend of automobile marketing has shifted from offline to online. The marketing scheme of automobile enterprises can be outsourced to a marketing planning company or sub project, which is very common, but plagiarism of Internet content is common, which is easy to involve infringement. It can also be seen that automobile enterprises do not pay attention to originality, blindly look for stars to bring goods, rely on online celebrities and stars to bring traffic, and do not pay attention to originality The need for large-scale offline activities leads to insufficient project budget, so there is a lack of budget for copywriting and creativity. These are the problems that car enterprises need to pay attention to and avoid in publicity and marketing in the future. “
As Zhang Xiang said, a marketing accident will not only damage the brand’s business image, but also bring legal risks such as Audi incident. What any enterprise needs is timely, reasonable and healthy marketing publicity, because building a sound “brand personality” is always more important than marketing just for traffic and heat.
