The Julius-Nando's hullabaloo - 100% genius

Nando's Malema viral advertising campaign has gotten 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 in a very short space of time.

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

Debates on social media

The verbiage between the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) only added fuel to the fire and stoked debates on social media such as Twitter and Facebook and saw a slew of blog posts 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.

This WOM marketing (word of mouth) has been extraordinary in an area that cannot be monitored and evaluated. [That's debatable - assistant editor]

Nando's certainly can crow about the results of the campaign. It achieved some R267 321 worth of coverage of free editorial in two week. Google shows that thousands of blog posts were also written, and hundreds of news items posted online. A Twitter Search shows that the keywords "nando's" and "malema" were repeatedly tweeted by South Africa'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 its brand and maximized its marketing spend with a genius campaign that got South Africa's media and public talking chicken, and then some.

Plucky parody

Seasoned hands at guerrilla marketing and making their advertising money increase exponentially with daring viral strategies, Nando's aired a plucky parody of 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 Malema, a natural news driver who is continually at the forefront of the media.

The ad drew an outcry from the ANCYL 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.

This Nando's campaign was pure genius and catapulted the brand into the public eye while entrenching the loyalty with its own constituency.

For more:

• Bizcommunity.com: search results for 'Nando's'