An inside peek at Nando's Mangogate
What went on behind the scenes?
QSR Media talks to Nicole West, Nando's Australia National Marketing Campaign about this bold stunt which promoted their new mango and lime flavour:
QSR: How much of an impact has it had for the brand?
Nicole: We are still in the process of evaluating the coverage, but suffice to say it generated a lot of publicity and traction in social media channels both in Australia and internationally. Ultimately, this campaign was about raising awareness and driving trial of our delicious new Mango and Lime flavour, an alternative for people who want a milder option to PERi-PERi, and we have been very successful at driving both.
QSR: This is an extremely bold campaign, was it an easy or hard decision for executive management at Nando's?
Nicole: When we thought about how to launch our big new Mango and Lime flavour we knew we wanted a big idea. Nando’s is a unique brand in the fast casual dining space, so we knew we needed to make a bold statement. We discussed the concept extensively and gave it a lot of thought, but ultimately we felt the idea was strong enough to justify any potential risk. We had a great team to support it across creative, media, PR and production, so we felt like we were well-placed to handle whatever came our way.
Nando’s brand proposition is ‘eat interesting’ – from the art of our flame grill, to our restaurant interiors, our PERi-PERi, our people and of course, our product launches. We wanted to launch the new Mango and Lime product in a way that was genuinely interesting and the complete antithesis of bland!
QSR: How has management responded to any negative blowback?
Nicole: Given the amount of media coverage and conversation in social media, the percentage of negative feedback has been very minimal. Bold ideas can often be polarising and we acknowledge that not everyone will always like what we do. Where appropriate, we’ve responded to comments in social media, particularly when we needed to set the record straight about our involvement with Bowen Tourism (with whom we worked closely from the start of the campaign), but we were happy to allow people to voice their opinions.
QSR: Do you think you might have started a trend for other QSR's?
Nicole: Only time will tell! If they do decide to follow suit, we will have already moved on to something new!
QSR: Any other comments?
Nicole: We have been blown away by the response this campaign generated. Social media was critical to its success. Memes were being generated within hours of the mango going missing – and our Bowen Facebook page grew to 5000 within the first day. It was a lot of fun to watch people respond and we felt that it captured something of the Australian larrikin spirit.
We are also really grateful to the Bowen residents who were incredibly supportive and laid back about the campaign. It’s safe to say that more people, in Australia and around the world, have heard of Bowen and its Big Mango, so we hope that this translates into more tourism to the area.
