Nando’s, a South African chicken restaurant well known for its tongue-in-cheek advertising, needed to advertise their diverse menu, get people talking about the brand and sell a whole lot of meals. We had a small budget so we decided to get people’s attention by parodying a local insurance company’s latest, big budget advert – starring Sir Ben Kingsley. Santam responded to the parody by releasing a video requesting that we deliver a large order of Nando’s to a local orphanage. It was battle of the brands and Nando’s got to have the final say with a video that accepted their challenge and then exceeded it by promising to feed the orphanage for an entire year. Social media went crazy. Nando’s had the highest Twitter activity it had ever experienced with over 8,000 tweets being sent in just a few days, reaching close to 7 million users. Nando’s also trended nationally for two consecutive days. The combined views on YouTube hit almost a million within a few weeks and mainstream media from television and radio stations to newspapers and magazines picked up on the story. We received over R4.5 million in free PR and exceeded our already ambitious sales targets by over 200,000 meals, making this one of the most successful campaigns Nando’s has ever done. Through clever placement, quick thinking and the power of social media, we were ultimately able to take one, small budget TV ad and turn it into the most talked about campaign of the year.

The initial advert was ‘leaked’ to influential bloggers on the morning of the 16th of April. The advert was only scheduled to be aired that night so this allowed the bloggers to “get the story first” and share the much anticipated new Nando’s advert with their followers before anyone else did. For the TV launch, we used what media spend we had to buy prime-time slots that we anticipated would fall into the same schedule as the Santam adverts, allowing viewers to see both ads almost 'back-to-back'. After Santam aired their response ad (on April 23rd), we had to adapt our plan to include another ad that we manage to conceptualize, film and send out within three days (on April 26th). This response was released online only as this allowed us to reach as many people as possible as quickly as possible (and without going over budget).

This campaign was one of the most successful campaigns Nando’s has ever run both in terms of public reaction and meal sales. With a 170% increase in tweets, Twitter activity was the highest Nando’s had ever experienced. Nando’s trended for two consecutive days, with our overall reach increasing by 219% (over 7 million users). Between 10and5, one of South Africa’s biggest advertising blogs, even broke their record for the most hits in one day as a result of their post on the campaign. Combined YouTube views reached almost a million and mainstream media picked up on the story with major news publications and magazines running articles, radio stations requesting interviews and a local media television show running a segment on it. This generated free PR to the value of over R4.5 million. From a sales perspective, we exceeded our already ambitious sales target by over 200 000 meals.