Nando’s: ‘Little Hotties’ campaign is sassy not sleazy
Restaurant chain Nando’s has moved to head off criticism that an online element of its ‘Little Hotties’ campaign, which features women in burlesque-style lingerie, is guilty of objectifying women.
Nando’s marketing director Kim Russell told Mumbrella that the video on microsite, which as of last night had received 30,000 visitors, was no more than “sassy and cheeky”, and in line with Nando’s brand positioning.
“It was a landing page for a microsite, and was right for our target market. We would never run anything like that on TV. The piece was not meant for mass reach,” she said.
The campaign to promote Nando’s first snack range, the Pequeno Mini Burger and Mini Pita, is targeted mainly at 20-29 year olds, according to a Nando’s marketing briefing.
Above the line activity has focused on radio, outdoor and instore.
Russell pointed out that the site had been styled by Nando’s marketing team, most of whom are women. “We had an internal debate about whether to have guys in the video too. But we decided that that may have been sleazy,” she said.
Russell appeared on Seven’s The Morning Show this morning, and said that the campaign was “just a bit of fun” and was not meant to be controversial.
The site was created by an agency in the UK, which had been handed the project as a first assignment following Nando’s split with The Sphere Agency in May.
The news come days after a government report slammed the effectiveness of industry self-regulation in curbing, among other vices, the objectification of women in ads.
I think it’s fine. and what i say goes.
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Everyone/ thing should just be green plain packaging and let the government tell us what to do.
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Sex can sell, but not if it’s used generically. This Nandos ad reminds me of a coffee commercial on last night that was all about sex as well. Can’t remember the brand, so not sure it was very effective, which is the point. Nandos is chicken. Why not have chickens dressed up in burlesque? Coffee has a lot of attributes that can be used to get the message across; why genericise it to sex? The commercials could be about anything. They don’t cement the brand name into the message. Not terribly creative, is it?
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Putting the sexist debate aside for now, the campaign and that website’s a load of non-sensical rubbish anyway.
Lucky they went all the way to the UK for it.
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There is a difference between being cheap but clever and just being cheap. This is well a truly cheap! They should just bring back older cheap campaigns like pole dancer.
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What are they selling? Smaller burgers with chilli, ie “little hotties” – join the dots
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Soooooo over the same crap from Nandos. Relevance is getting thinner and thinner.
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Yep this lacks thought I’m sorry and is very one dimensional. I don’t see how a woman, or a gay man would bother engaging with this message at all. All I saw was some chick who I have no interest in, tarting herself around with a burger in her hand. If there was an element of humor to it, like the pole dancer campaign then it would be totally different.
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Don’t you people have lives to save instead of tergiversating over this.
Oh, of course you don’t, you’re in advertising! And you are pissed that Nando’s didn’t come knock on your door for an idea. We’ve seen the ideas that agencies had for Nando’s in the past, and it was a lot worse.
And all the UK agency did was web development.
At the end of the day, who’s getting the PR? It’s NANDO’S.
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John, even if Nando’s didn’t like ideas that other agencies presented they obviously couldn’t afford it anyway
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Out of curiosity i read the brief, and the target market say’s “a portion of the female market that want to snack and kids after school ….. this creative has really hits the mark.
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Sean, they must be pretty dumb kids if they’re still at school when aged 20-29.
Maybe you’re one of them…
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I don’t know why the target description didnt simply start with teenage boys and adolescent males
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Sven, maybe because teenage boys and adolescent males need 5 mini burgers to fill them up.
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Sucker for a pin-up, so I’m sold.
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