Nando’s gets tactical for Lady Gaga’s Sydney visit
Nando’s has launched a tactical press campaign to coincide with the performance of Lady Gaga in Sydney tonight.
The ad, which ran in mX newspaper, plays on the name of the singer and her new album, ‘Born this way’.
The campaign follows the restaurant chain’s tactical activity around the State of Origin final last week.
Nando’s marketing director Kim Russell told Mumbrella that an agency was used to create the ad, but she would not reveal its identity.
The Lady Gaga campaign marks Nando’s second attempt at tactical advertising since parting ways with agency of eight years, The Sphere Agency in May.
Is MX a magazine now?
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Erm, no it isn’t. Thanks for spotting Commuter.
Cheers,
Robin – Mumbrella
much hotter than GAGA.
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How can the same guys come up with this, and that Youtube video last week? How can their most creative and least creative be so far apart?
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if an agency did it then it must be good
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I like it, very clever. But it does not make me want to eat chicken.
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Number 1 rule in food advertising – if you’re selling chicken, don’t show us a live chicken.
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credit where it’s due, a definite improvement on last week’s rather tragic origin effort. i guess if you are shopping around and using various different agencies for each opportunity you’ll get a hit and miss outcome, but that’s the deal if you’re not prepared to pay the premium of the retained agency.
the model they’ve adopted is workable, but requires a lot of client oversight and skill……someone was on holidays last week it appears.
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Note to Nando’s Marketing team:
You’ve made a very brave decision to dump your full service agency in favour of producing ads in house and farming out project work.
Since then you’ve posted the advertising equivalent of Cubism and a so-so piece of piggy-backing that it neither dreadful nor spectacular.
However, nothing you post on a blog is going to swing opinion that you’ve done the right thing. If anything, it’ll simply give the naysayers more ammunition. Just get on with the job of marketing your product without all the pr hooha for a good 12 months or so.
When you’ve got sales results to back up your move, then you can tell your story.
Until then, please, for everyone’s sake, keep your heads down and get on with the job of vindicating your decision.
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think they didn’t quite nail the headline – “You’ll go Gaga for our Peri-Peri” a bit less forced for mine
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Pretty lame and very cheesy.
Would sound good at an internal Nando’s meeting where everyone has full knowledge of the brand and its cooking process.
As for the rest of Australia, they’re left scratching their collective heads.
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Kim,
You’re doing a good job. Trying to please franchisees and mumbrella isn’t easy 🙂
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is it basted that way………. with feathers?? No thanks, i don’t feel like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight.
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So i’m going to cut this ad out of the MX, then walk into my local Nando’s restaurant, with a photo of a Live Chicken with feathers, mascara and a hair doo, and take it into Nandos’ to redeem my 2 little hotties. Will my chicken come with feathers and some hair???
Bon Apatite
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Chicken have feathers last time I heard. If you don’t like it, there’s always vegetarian options. We eat animals, they’re alive before they’re dead. Fact. Get over it.
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This is funny and it’s hijacking an event sponsored by somebody else.
How many kids picking up an MX at Town Hall Station yesterday had Nandos for dinner?
I don’t give a crap about your petty industry bitching.
Mug punters want to see clever ideas.
This is clever.
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I still feel that even tactical ads should reflect the brand and should add to what has gone before.
The Nandos brand (whether with a regular agency or not) is quite literally ‘random’.
Every piece of communication they do is unrelated to the last … or the next. Each ad has a different tone. Each ad has to work alone.
After years of following Nandos advertising I am no wiser about what the brand is or stands for.
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In western society we like to pretend that our chicken does not come from a live animal. Gone are the days when mum sits in the kitchen plucking a chicken after dad slit its throat.
Milk and eggs can have photos of animals on the packaging.
Meat should not.
Imagine a hamburger fast food restaurant advertising their burgers with a cow on the pack. Stun gun anyone?
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Tony – It seems that they themselves do not know what the brand stands for or where they are going.
After watching this brand over the years, it seems that they think all their problems will be solved if they focus on their audience of youth with lady Gaga tactical ads.
With 300 stores, this can’t be solving their problems. These guys need to focus on how they will grow their core audience and create a sustainable long term business generating enough customers to fuel a food operation that has 300 outlets nationally.
If i were a franchisee, i’d be wondering what the franchisor is actually doing to ensure the registers are ticking over, rather that trying to be a hero that can create cheeky in-house ads to make people laugh and show up agencies. It’s not about showing the world that they are creative genius’.
I’d be questioning what support they will be offering my business, while trying to deliver the impossible task of demonstrating “value for money” especially when it’s $25.00 for a combo meal. I would have thought that instead of trying to make me laugh, tell me why i should spend my hard earned dollars with Nando’s, since it’s almost twice as much as some competitors.
Franchisees need more customers, not little monsters. Unfortunately for Nando’s there arn’t enough little monsters to keep 300 restaurants humming………
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Nandos is totes expensive for fast food which must make it challenging to compete with the other fellas.
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Guys this is more of a branding exercise than it is about selling chicken. The point is, the ad is highly relevant and therefore going to be noticed and absorbed by viewers. If you think back to Nandos’ more successful stripper campaign, this achieves a similar effect of creating an emotion and tying it to the brand. Perhaps they could have left out the voucher offer and kept it as a brand message on its own, but hey, everything is clearer in hindsight.
I’m hungry for a Supremo Chicken burger, is that wrong?
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I do like their ads, they often make me laugh and always seem the little bit edgy but not to the point where it looks try hard, keep up the good work
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agree with take it or leave it @1.13 – when head office collects up to 5% of turnover for the marketing fund to spend on behalf of the franchisees there’s a hell of a lot of scrutiny about how that money is spent, and franchisees do not support self-indulgent “brand building” shite that doesn’t get dead chooks moving out the door fast.
Dario @2.59 you’d be tarred and feathered if you stood up and presented work designed as a branding exercise to a bunch of franchisees. all they want is foot traffic and turnover, all over the country, not centred around some narrow event in the middle of sydney.
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Yes but the franchisees aren’t the client. Let them focus on running their stores (that is their specialty, after all) and let head office drive the brand and bring in the traffic. Nando’s is not KFC or Red Rooster. The target customer is far more sophisticated and so is the brand. While there is no direct meal deal in big bold red text with little a little scissor Wingding so the fast food addicts snip a voucher out and save $2.49 when they upsize to the Baconator with Diet Coke, I think this strategy, for Nando’s, works.
And if brand building was just self-indulgent shite, then why do companies spend millions on it? The truth is, chicken choker, it works, and it is a far more effective LONG TERM strategy to keep customers coming back to for more of what they know and love.
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Oh and any concerned franchisees can take comfort in the fact that their money seems to have been well spent. Judging by the image, the ad was printed mono + 1 spot colour – far cheaper than a full colour ad. And given it was reactive it was probably distressed space too so purchased at a discounted rate.
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Ad kings, now franchising experts. Some agency people are amazing, you hold the truth no matter the industry. The sun does shine out of you bum, doesn’t it?
“With 300 stores, this can’t be solving their problems..” Errr, what problems? It seems to me that everything is going well in chickenland. How about focusing on winning some business for your agency instead, you’ll be more productive that making up BS!
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@nickatnights, go buy a quarter pounder from McDonald’s.. they have pictures of cows on the inside of the packaging.
People today know what they’re eating.
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