Challenge

Nando’s by its very nature is cheeky. How can the this mentality be embraced by the brand and live outside of the restaurant and the vast number of chicken-fueled discussions?

Idea

Set the tone on Twitter by being nimble, clever and quick enough to jump on moments of interest to the Nando’s audience in the cheekiest way possible.

So when Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement from Manchester United and I got a call about it from the Nando’s social lead I walked straight out of the meeting I was in. Within five minutes we had a solid idea - #NandosFergieTime. To honour the manager’s innate ability to manifest a decent chunk of additional extra time in games, we decided to open all nine of the Manchester-based restaurants for an extra five minutes that evening.

The restaurants were informed and the website opening hours for each one was updated (with screenshots taken to be used on Twitter) and a blog post detailing both where and why it was happening was drafted (all within hours of the official announcement).

Then a simple Tweet to declare the introduction of #NandosFergieTime to the world.

Results

It swiftly became one of the brands most ReTweeted Tweets of all time and trended 2nd in the UK (and worldwide) until after the restaurants had shut. It was lauded as a real-time marketing coup by football fans across the globe (and even United fans loved it!). The press swiftly picked up the story with articles about the idea appearing in the Metro, The Mirror, The Independent and online for sporting publications like ESPN. To this day it is championed as an example of great reactive marketing.