Category archives: S’HOT

Nando’s is renowned for its in-your-face ads that elicit a guffaw, because the brand often rips off popular culture icons and, delightfully, other ads. Last year it took a swing at Santam’s ad demonstrating the fact that we very often miss the details in ads. It did this by surreptitiously changing a background character’s clothing while the main character spoke about insurance clauses.

Santam could have reacted all ‘stuffed shirt’ about this cloned ad, and even taken Nando’s to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), but instead they offered to forgive the chicken people if a delivery of 74 Nando’s meals was made to the Johannesburg Children’s Home. Nando’s complied, but went one better by promising to repeat the exercise once a month for a year. It was a win-win for both brands, and the kid’s home.

Now Nando’s has done a rip-off of that iconic Old Spice campaign, which was called “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”. Old Spice’s campaign was the stuff of legend and inspired reams of advertising case studies. The Old Spice ad became a viral sensation at the time, due to its cheeky, yet self-effacing and wry humour – it was poking fun at itself and an entire category.But more so, it was a pioneering, genre-defining campaign that showed how a brand could be re-invigorated with a clever campaign.