"There is this inherent hypocrisy that comes with unconscious bias, social prejudices or whatever you want to call them, and we wanted to bring that to the surface and allow people to have this conversation," said Doug Place, chief marketing officer at Nando's, at a pre-screening at Nando's Central Kitchen aka "the Google of chicken" in Lorentzville, Johannesburg on Friday, 23 November.
'You people' is a phrase many South Africans use when talking to people who are different to them. But this notion of 'you people' isn’t helpful, said Place. “We're not going to go forward staying with the 'you people' thing. That’s not to say that we must just pretend everything’s ok, but there are some important conversations we need to have…”
And Nando’s is always quite confrontational when it comes to raising these issues, but they try to do this in a way that isn’t preachy, negative and hard bearing, but in a way that’s slick, funny and South African.
The key message, at the end of the day, is that 'all you people' are welcome in a Nando’s – Nando’s has a big sales drive at the moment where 'you people' can get together and share a meal. “So, there is a financial consequence, but we also want to contribute meaningfully to a good and healthy debate, we want people to laugh at themselves and at each other, and we want things to be different because nothing’s going to be better unless we all make it better.
"A year ago we reminded South African’s that we can fix our sh!t and this ‘you peopling’ is something we can all fix. If you’re watching our ad and say ‘I’ve done that’ (hopefully with a guilty smile), then we’ve been successful at starting a crucial conversation – hopefully, one that starts with ‘us people’."
