A Challenger brand from the beginning, global restaurant brand Nando’s has always had ambitions that outweighed its resources. From its founding in Johannesburg in 1987 to the now over 1,000 shops worldwide, they’ve continually demonstrated their ability to tell stories with passion and enthusiasm. We interviewed Marketing Director Jessica Wheeler to understand how Nando’s uses their Challenger Mindset to speak on behalf of their audience when it matters most.

Nando’s has been around for several decades now. Can you tell us how the story of the brand has unfolded over the years?

Nando’s will be 38 in September and the company started much like any Challenger brand would, with two guys having lunch at this peri-peri chicken place and thinking, this is amazing, and the world needs to know about it. These were two guys who had no business being in the restaurant industry at all – neither of them had any experience in it. They just fell in love with the product, and they knew that this was something that firstly, South Africa, and now, eventually the world, deserved to have a taste of. So, the brand was born out of that Challenger Mindset.

So, they bought that chicken shop, and really, right from the onset, they had no choice but to do marketing in a different way. They had no money. They had no experience. Their first ad agency was paid in shares in the brand. Everything was patched together out of enthusiasm, and this will to share this amazing product with the world, and it's still very much the philosophy of where we're at today.

At the end of the day, we've got to return to the quality of the product and the way that customers experience that product, because it's very easy to get lost in all the opportunities, the advertising and the comms that sits out there. You've got to put the product at the centre. And that's the one thing about Nando's that is as true today as it was nearly 38 years ago when we opened the first store.

That enthusiasm is reflected in the way we communicate. It's reflected in our marketing strategies. We've got be bullish. We've got be positive. We've got be optimistic, often, in spite of the world crumbling around us at the best of times. So, we have a philosophy of acting like shop owners – imagine this was your one peri-peri chicken shop, and you were in charge of it. You have to make those decisions for this one store, instead of thinking about the 300+ we have in South Africa and the more than 1,000 we have around the world. You've got to think of it as that one little chicken shop. What decisions would you make, and how would you go to market if you were just doing it for this one little thing with no money?

We often say that one of the things that defines Challengers is that they are fighting against a monster – in society, culture, the category, etc. Thinking about your brand purpose, what is Nando’s fighting against?

I think that changes over time, right? The one thing that we often don't speak about is our Challenger Mindset. You don't have it and then just have it forever. You've got to consistently work at it. So, as we go along with time, that big monster in the room changes. It may have at some point been a big category player or a big competitor, but right now it's more of a societal impact. The role that Nando's as a brand, plays in South African society is very different now, because we're bigger, and we're a little bit more grown up. We've got more scale, so we have the opportunity to actually have real impact and influence the sentiment of the country on social media channels, in particular. So, that monster changes over time, because if you keep fighting the same monster, you feel it in the work, and you feel it in the teams, and you feel it in the way you go to market. It gets formulaic, and other people catch up. Other people start doing it, and you lose that Challenger positioning pretty quickly. You've got to keep looking out for the next monster. So, for us moving forward, that monster has a lot more to do with society and the impact that we can have, rather than pushing directly against a category competitor.

How do you dramatise that fight when it comes to your communications strategy?

We're pretty good at picking up the underlying message. So, it's really easy, particularly in this day and age, on social media to have a handful of listening tools which will just spit out the things that are trending or the things that people are talking about. But often, that's not what people want to hear. If you just latch on to the next trending topic or the football results, or the political climate, you'll get a pretty surface level thing, but we really try and uncover what it is that people want to be said on their behalf. There may be a topic of conversation about politics, and there's a lot of chatter about it online, but perhaps what people want said on their behalf is something slightly different. Hypothetically speaking, people may actually want to have a conversation about South Africa being strong enough and bold enough to stand on its own two feet. So, perhaps we don't need to engage with international politics and those kinds of things. It's always about finding that little layer underneath that is what people want to be said on their behalf. Because if you just reflect back what they're saying, it doesn't really get very far.

Our approach, particularly with social commentary, came from the fact that we were this Challenger brand. We were looking for ways to be involved in the conversation that didn't require oodles and oodles of media money, which we never had back in the day, and, quite frankly, we still don't have today. So, you've got to find interesting and smart ways to be a part of that conversation. We still say, we want to be part of the conversation. We don't want to lead a conversation; we don't want to start a conversation. We just want to give an interesting point of view or say what our audience wants to be said. It is very difficult and time consuming and particularly with the proliferation of social media, there are 40,000 opportunities a day to do something, and it can become quite overwhelming. So, we have a shortcut now to pick out the things that we'd like to engage with. We are now a global brand. We have a responsibility to be very conscious of the fact that we operate in other markets and that there are sensitivities there, culturally as well as societal, which we may not have an idea on. So, we've had to give ourselves guardrails, especially as the tone of some of the social media channels can be quite negative and bullying. So, we try to stay away from those ones, in particular. Our approach has shifted over time, but I think the ambition is still strong to be a part of the conversation and be the voice of the people – to say the things that people want to be said on their behalf when it matters.

Many of your comms are quite punchy. How do you overcome barriers within your organisation when it comes to more potentially risky communications ideas? And how do you motivate your team to take these risks?

It’s difficult. The more grown up and the bigger you get, the more the system is almost hedged against that. So, particularly from a marketing point of view, we can be super bullish about something, and we almost have to be. We have to be overly bullish, because we know that the process to get there, it's going to pull it back, right? You'll have finance people in the way and ops people and franchisees, and all sorts of people that may chip away at that idea. So, you actually have to overshoot it, knowing that there's a little bit of flex for it to be pulled back and to be something that realistically we can execute at scale. We do have a need to execute everything at scale, because we have 300+ restaurants on the ground, that this needs to show up in. So, we've always got to overshoot, knowing it's going to be pulled back. If you start with average and it gets nibbled away, then you have nothing. You almost have to go for the absolute shock factor, knowing that you're probably going to land on something special by the time everyone's had a bite at it.

How would you articulate the Nando’s brand ambition and what sets you apart from other businesses in your category?

Our ambition is to be the most loved brand, not the biggest, not the most profitable, just the most loved. We are led by visionaries; and we have very ambitious leadership who want to build a legacy brand, not a short-term results brand. This automatically puts us at an advantage, because we can afford to make the decisions that invest in customer experience that has a legacy impact. That investment has deep implications for the business and long term returns, as opposed to us worrying about the things that we do today that have to have a return tomorrow. That’s not to say we haven't been there. We've played, and we've burnt our fingers. We've learnt a bunch of things, but particularly in our category, when you're worried about the short-term results, you start putting the customer experience to the side, and you start looking at cost cutting, cost efficiencies, speed. Just turning tables as fast as you can, so that you can kind keep this monster going. But when you have a long-term outlook or a legacy ambition, it completely changes the game. We have the licence to invest in things today, knowing that potentially, the return is going to be three years or five years away, and that return may be made up of loads of different things altogether, rather than one big thing like discounting our food. It makes it easier to be able to do those things, because of the way we're structured and the general culture and attitude of the leadership team.

Can you tell us about your customer experience and what makes it unique?

Nando’s customer experience is particularly thought through. There are things that you would not even notice until they're pointed out that all add to that experience. So, every single touch point that you experience, either within a restaurant, through one of our drive thru channels, or even if you're just picking up food to take home and enjoy – every single one of those touch points is designed for a reason. It's designed very thoughtfully.

Almost everything in the Nando’s experience is also quite closely linked to our ‘shared value’ ethos as well. We prioritise sourcing from Southern African suppliers. We make sure that when you come into Nando's and you see the art on the wall that you know that it is not art that's mass produced. It's created by Southern African creatives, and we make sure they have a platform to be able to showcase their art to the world. Every piece of furniture is designed by a creator from Southern Africa. We give this platform to artists and creators to take their stuff to the world.

The packaging is very thoughtfully designed. Every little touch point is there for a reason. It's this obsession with giving customers an experience that they will get nowhere else, no matter which Nando's restaurant you walk into, every single one is different. They're all designed within their own right, within the communities that they show up in. Because of the interior designer or artist’s vision, every single one is different, because every single Nando’s experience should have a degree of feeling unique, a degree of personalization. It's part of our customer experience that makes us fundamentally different from anywhere else. You can't just buy a Nando's in a box. It's got to be curated. And again, it's that long term legacy ambition that shows through there, where we're not designing restaurants that last three years that you can turn over or shut down and move to the next location. They're designed to be part of the community, for people to be proud to come enjoy a meal in this amazing atmosphere with great food, which is very important because it's the core of the experience.

Although each Nando’s restaurant is unique, what’s the one emotion you hope customers feel after every visit (besides stuffed with delicious food)?

We would love for people to leave feeling inspired – we call it fired up. There's a part of that experience that is special and unique, that they know they wouldn't get some somewhere else. Whether it's a simple act of handing over food, or the ordering system, what is it that's part of the experience that only Nando's can do? What makes it unique or makes it feel like something a little bit more important, a little bit more creative, a little bit more inspiring than just sitting at a plastic table and chairs with a plastic tray and hoovering your food and moving on, right? We would love for people to appreciate the space. Everything is curated - the music, the art, the food – everything is so thought through. You get the most out of it when you're sitting in the space and you're experiencing it. So, we'd love people to leave feeling obviously satiated and enthusiastic about the food, but just a little bit more inspired than when they walked into the front door.

Obviously, it's different if you're an off-premise customer and you're taking the food home, but even then, we've brought the Nando’s personality and tone to the packaging, to make sure that you get a little bit of it, even if you take it home. So, napkins are a funny thing, because, again, if you were any other brand, you'd go and you would just give people napkins, right? But we understand that that's a brand touchpoint; that that's an opportunity to give a little bit of personality. So, the lines are made for a little giggle, made for a little smile, made for a little thought, which is exactly the feeling we want in our restaurants.

What has proven to work really, really well is merch. It's not promotional merchandise. It's well thought through, crafted Nando's merch. We're able to tell the stories of Nando's through our merch to young people, because we have thoughtfully thought through certain things. So, every piece of Nando's merch has got the red thread, which is a thread on the garment that is dyed with the African Birdseye chili that we grow in Mozambique and then we export across the world. So that thread creates an interesting conversation point for kids to say, ‘You see this heart here? This red is actually a chilli, and the chili comes from Mozambique.’ So, we find new ways in to be able to tell those stories. The merch is a great thing. People love merch and ours is not mass produced. It is locally curated with South African designers so that we can give back to creatives and then give them a platform. It's small batch, quite exclusive. If you get it, you're cool, because you can't buy it everywhere. You can get it at events. You can get it very thoughtfully, and that's a vehicle for us to tell stories in a different way.

What’s next for Nando’s on your brand journey?

It’s part of the evolution of business. Our culture doesn't change, and our values don't change, and we still have that entrepreneurial partly chaotic, partly magical mindset. But we now operate in a very different context, and particularly in the South African environment, that changes really frequently. You've got to take the time to just sit back do a bit of an objective deep dive. And that's difficult, right? If you try to objectively review your brand as the brand custodian, it's difficult to do that, but you've got to take a step back and say, ‘Okay, with our long-term outlook, and legacy creating thinking, what is the Nando's we need to start building today, so that my kids have a place that feels the same to them as what it feels like for me today?’ There's now a new generation of customers coming in, and they have different demands and different values. They have different ways of enjoying food that are foreign to us. You've got to keep up with the times. What we will never lose is that Challenger Mindset. But we've done it for so long, and particularly in the South African context, it was a very winning formula for us. However, the natural fallout of that is that other people will adopt it, and other people will start sounding and feeling awfully familiar to Nando’s, whether they're in the category or not, it doesn't really matter. So, we forged a new path back then and we need to now use this time to say, what’s next? What do we keep that is so true to us and so important to us that we hang on to it, but what do we have the courage to let go and do differently for a new generation of customers that are going to come in our doors?

How do you continue to embrace your Challenger Mindset while still combatting dull?

It's a considered effort. It's not a one off. We've been doing this for 37 years, and you've got to work hard at it every single day, because the world will throw things in your way that will tell you to change and tell you to conform. It will tell you to go back to the tried and tested and often overly measured way of doing things. It’s a lot of hard thinking, and it's not something you just shoot from the hip for either. It sounds very sexy and glamorous and agile and creative, but it's a thoughtful decision, and you've got to consider it. I've seen brands who have tried to go there, but it was clearly not thought through. It comes across as being crass or controversial or meaningless, because what they're trying to do is get attention rather than have impact. Of course, we want to get more attention, to box way above our league in terms of a spend perspective, but it's got to have a brand impact, not a short-term result. It's got to have some kind of equity building come from it. Otherwise, it's just noise and you get stuck in a habit of just putting out rubbish work. And that’s not only dull, consistently done, but it can actually be detrimental to your brand as well. So, you've got to think about it. You've got to have a long, hard think about it and, for heaven's sake, speak to people who know how these things work.

You can't just do it from a comms perspective. You have to do it throughout your experience. It doesn't help if you're a Challenger brand on the outside, but inside you're just a cookie-cutter, standard-operating-procedure-driven, robotic company. That kind of tension is always going to be cognitive dissonance for anybody. So, it's not a quick decision. It's got to be well thought through, and you've got to work at it every single day, because the world will put up those roadblocks. They will tell you, ‘No, just do something different. Just try this.’

It's hard. It's hard work, but it's absolutely worth it.

“Our ambition is to be the most loved brand, not the biggest, not the most profitable, just the most loved.”: Jessica Wheeler, Nando’s