Late night talk show host Conan O’Brien called out the Chinese online talk show Da Peng for ripping off his opening show sequence, plagerizing his opening graphics and using his branding.

The next night the Da Peng show opened with a slide and what Conan calls “The saddest thing I’ve ever seen.” And Da Peng also issued an apology that ended with a “sorry” dance.

Now things get interesting. Instead of the usual, take it to court, cease and desist stuff, Conan gets his graphics team to make the Da Peng show their own opening sequence — and give it to him to use for free.

From a legal standpoint, hmmm. Not the usual response, that’s for sure.

But for Marketing… this may be a home run. Now Da Peng is using the opening and promoting Conan to the largest population in the world.

I like that Conan decided co-marketing was the way to go and looked at the glass half fun full instead of half empty.

Conan’s Co-Marketing

Here’s De Pang’s response to Conan’s offer in videos - with translations - courtesy of TeaLeafNation:

So what can we learn from this? Is there a branding problem that you’re dealing with that could be approached in a totally different way?

Maybe there’s a way that some co-marketing can make a win-win solution for everyone.