For too long now, South Africans have been played by a government and private sector riddled with corruption, collusion, and confusion. It’s a game with few winners, and one we as a country just can’t seem to stop playing.

South Africa’s corruption has led to a junk economy, mass unemployment, widespread crime, a non-functional electricity grid thanks to national provider Eskom, and our national airline SAA being billions in dept.

Politicians like to blame all this on “white monopoly capital”, a term incorrectly blaming the country’s woes on historical race issues.

As the brand that stands for being the voice of the people and saying what’s on everyone’s minds, Nando’s wanted to speak up. So, we turned Mzansi (South Africa’s local nickname) into Mzansipoli, our own version of Monopoly that calls out the misdeeds of those controlling our country with some trademark Nando’s spicy humour.

Our film was shot to look like a toy commercial for a new version of Monopoly called Mzansipoli, based on the name “Mzansi” which is what locals call South Africa.

An overly-representative, mixed-race family is playing the board game, a fully adapted version of traditional Monopoly featuring local names, places, and institutions.

The family call out the numerous woes currently facing South Africans as they play the game, a position that Nando’s as a brand is famous for.

Our custom Mzansipoli board game was designed from the ground up to be a South African version of the game.

We 3D printed our own playing tokens, designed a playing board filled with jabs at politicians and government institutions, and even rewrote the instruction manual.

African elements were brought into the design too, as were Nando’s CI elements to tie it all together.

The campaign made national headlines with the ad being discussed countrywide across news outlets. We got the same amount of views in two weeks that the previous TWO Nando’s commercials had received together over six months, and achieved the highest organic reach on social media for a Nando’s campaign.