100% Genius

Nando’s campaign featuring Julius Malema was nothing short of inspired, creating significant publicity and brand loyalty by getting the nation talking chicken.
By Oresti Patricios, CEO OrnicoGroup

Nando’s Malema viral advertising campaign got the whole of South Africa talking chicken, but the huge brand win for Nando’s has been the huge amount of credible editorial publicity secured and the massive drive to support the brand in social media.

The timing and topicality of the campaign was perfect, garnering coverage on radio and in high profile media like Beeld, Sowetan, Burger, The Citizen, The Times and The Star.

The verbiage between the ANCYL only added fuel to the fire and stoked debates on social media like Twitter, Facebook and saw a slew of blogs written about the issue. At polling stations, restaurants and coffee shops in urban, up market suburbs the talk was about Nando’s and the Malema controversy, helping to drive a swell of brand loyalty for the peri-peri chicken people.

Nando’s certainly can crow about the results of the campaign. "They achieved some R 267 300 worth of coverage of free editorial in two weeks" Says Oresti Patricios from Ornico, an Independent Brand Intelligence firm. Google also shows that thousands of blogs were written, and hundreds of news items posted online. A Twitter search shows that the keywords “nando’s” and “malema” were repeatedly Tweeted by SA’s top digerati and online influencers with strong positive sentiment toward the Nando’s brand.

The bottom line is a very clever move on the part of Nando’s which has achieved top of mind presence for their brand and maximized their marketing spend with a genius campaign that got South Africa’s media and public talking chicken, and then some.


Seasoned hands at guerrilla marketing and making their advertising money increase exponentially with daring viral strategies, Nando’s aired a plucky parody of Julius Malema just as South Africans were about to go to the polls. The ad underscored the brand’s unique market position with a strong sense of humour and played on the concept of change, a subject top of mind with a new government coming in. The real genius was using Julius Malema, a natural news driver who is continually at the forefront of the media.

The ad drew an outcry from the ANC Youth League which only served to stoke the media flames and saw the debate running for close on two weeks, a major coup for a commercial brand. This latest publicity drive comes hot on the heels of the Joost ad, which was another smart attempt to drive word of mouth, online presence and achieve editorial coverage.

With a target market generally in the LSM 7 and up, Nando’s market is urban, educated and sophisticated. A sassy, street-smart consumer that is involved in heady political debate and not easily angered by satire. In fact a review of the social media shows that the local digerati championed the Nando’s cause with blogs, Tweets and Facebook status updates showing strong brand support.

Ornico’s media tracking and brand intelligence shows that Nando’s campaign was pure genius and catapulted the brand into the public eye while entrenching the loyalty with their own constituency.

Julius does Nandos a Favour

Julius Malema and the ANCYL have done Nandos a huge favour. They have given them so much publicity while Nandos still remained true to the brand. "Our campaign was all about bringing a fun element to the elections. We have done that and are happy with the energy it has created," Sylvester Chauke said.

Nandos’ target market is the sophisticated, urban market. They can understand the humour in the ads without alienating them from the brand. They have always positioned themselves as a fun but cheeky brand. Remember the “blind woman” ads that were run years ago.

Nandos also does very tactical advertising and has used the election euphoria to generate more publicity around the brand. Rand for Rand they cannot compete with the likes of KFC or McDonalds but there is no doubt that the recall is higher than most the of their competitor brands.

The publicity they generated also gave them mileage. Word of mouth also builds trust and increases the publicity of the brand. Again Nandos did well as their consumers had conversations around the advertising and the brand. This excludes the amount of publicity they received on the internet and on blogs.

So thank you Julius you helped grow the Nandos brand. You are so clever. I wonder what this did to your brand?