Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on January 30 - February 5, 2017.

 

NANDO’s in Malaysia is no stranger to the digital world — its witty, tongue-in-cheek campaigns have easily won over the hearts of Malaysians and its brand continues to flourish, especially with the younger crowd. Every year, it is nominated for the Effie Malaysia Awards.

But a lot of hard work goes into marketing the brand in an effective and engaging manner. In 2012, during the Olympics and the Euro Cup, in true Nando’s fashion, the brand wanted to remain relevant during this sporting season.

This was challenging, considering that many brands had larger budgets to work with. Nando’s Malaysia, alongside its advertising agency for the campaign, Creative Juice, managed to prove once again that having a great idea can propel the brand ahead of its competitors ­despite budget restrictions.

As a quick-serve restaurant that focuses its business on the urban middle class, Nando’s has always had a clear set for its primary target audience — the PMEB (professionals, managers, entrepreneurs and businessmen) aged 25 to 34; and its secondary audience, the tertiary students and first jobbers from the ages of 18 to 24.

The need to be both relevant to this ­audience and being fast enough to catch their precious attention are essential to succeeding as a brand. In 2012, Nando’s was up against a tough sporting season from June to August.

It faced a formidable task — making a chicken brand relevant to this sporting season. “The big boys in telco and consumer electronics were spending a fortune on inspiring messages on TV and print, and even sponsoring athletes,” says Sa’ad Hussein, chief creative officer of Creative Juice.

But the ones posing a stiff challenge were the well-funded fast-food chains like KFC and McDonald’s. Nando’s, however, has always had a policy of not giving discounts or slashing prices at the expense of quality food and ­service, says Hussein.

This meant that during the highly competitive season, it was at a further disadvantage against the other quick-service restaurant players who used meal deals to entice customers.

 

The big idea

But regardless of the timeline given to Creative Juice, the big idea happened. Faced with a limited budget, it had to find creative ways for the campaign. “We typically come up with ideas [tailored] to the budget given to us, but of course, bigger budgets can amplify ideas,” says Hussein.

Many clients often think that ideas have little monetary value but this is not true, he adds.

“We came up with this quirky idea that ordinary people can also be champions. We didn’t want to just celebrate the heroes, we wanted the focus to be on the spectators,” Hussein shares. “Everything was done on the fly and at the time, content marketing — creating something viral — was still fairly new.”

Creative Juice decided to create two characters that would be a hit with the public.

That is how two ordinary Joes rose to fame. Macho Kai and Harry Kok took to the stage, facing off in various challenges like penalty kicks, rhythmic gymnastics, pole-dancing, guitar playing and even leaping through rings of fire. They were recorded and released as individual videos on YouTube.

The videos were then tagged to common search topics during the sporting seasons, ­using tags like euro2012, olympics2012, football, playoffs and teammalaysia.

Of course, social media was also used to engage their online fans. During the campaign, Nando’s and Creative Juice also kept watch for significant moments like when Christiano Ronaldo’s team lost in the semi-finals. They then released a poster teasing him — this elicited both positive and negative engagement.

But one of the most significant engagements came when they supported local badminton hero Datuk Lee Chong Wei with a simple poster after he lost in the finals. The amount of media coverage garnered by the poster alone surpassed what Lee’s official sponsor achieved despite a heavy spend.

They also made use of the physical realm by utilising the public space around the Nando’s restaurants in Malaysia. “We held a PR campaign at the newly opened Paradigm Mall, where Macho Kai and Harry Kok were present, pulling in the crowd. We also created a mobile sports area, inviting the public to step up and allow us to grill them into being champions.”

“We also distributed cardboards with a simple yet fun DIY game — thumb-wrestling. It was an easy and cheap keepsake for diners, which gave them a longer lasting point of interaction with the brand.”

Macho Kai and Harry Kok also hijacked local sporting events during this season, such as the Standard Chartered run, by making surprise appearances.

 

Campaign objectives and results

The objective of the campaign was to prevent restaurant sales from declining in anticipation of aggressive advertising by competitors. “The client has a steady projected sales growth of 10% year on year, or a 2.5% growth every quarter and we had to prevent sales from dipping below that target during this season,” Hussein shares.

But throughout the campaign, Nando’s noted an increase in sales of 18%, and a footfall ­increase of 15%. What is even more impressive is that despite July being the month of Ramadan, the brand also recorded sales growth of 3%.

On the social media front, the objective was to increase engagement with its brand loyalists — in which they were also successful. From a 37,633 fan base in 2011, it grew to 92,800 in June 2012 before the campaign began. When the campaign ended, Nando’s Malaysia’s Facebook page saw a sizeable increase of about 30,000 fans.

Today, the page has over 3.9 million fans. James Best, former chief strategist officer of DDB Worldwide, once said that memorability is not enough in advertising and marketing. He said that ads work better if people like them. “Go for likeability ahead of stand-out as a predictor of effectiveness,” he added. That effectiveness, through the two likeable characters, is exactly what Nando’s Malaysia and Creative Juice accomplished together with the campaign.

 

 

About Effie Awards

Effie Worldwide stands for effectiveness in marketing communications, spotlighting marketing ideas that work and encouraging thoughtful dialogue about the drivers of marketing effectiveness. The Effie Awards are known by advertisers globally as the preeminent award in the industry, and recognise all forms of marketing communications that contribute to a brand’s success. For educational purposes, Effie and 4As encourage the dissemination of best practices in advertising and marketing communications effectiveness.

 

About the 4As

The 4As Malaysia was formed in 1971 and is the Malaysian industry’s foremost body representing and promoting the values of advertising agencies in the marketing communications industry to advertisers, media, suppliers, the government and the public.

This organisation encompasses over 80 homegrown and multinational member agencies involved in brand strategy and marketing communication. It celebrates, encourages and fosters creativity through brand-building ideas that drive growth and value generation for brands. The 4As promotes best practice and business excellence in all forms of professional advertising practice. It requires its member agencies to invest in continuous professional development in order to retain membership. The 4As engages the business community and government in dialogue to demonstrate the relevance of advertising as an effective vehicle for economic growth.

 

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