First a Mango, Now a Dugong

With Explore Communications warning that the recent marketing stunt by Nando’s was setting a dangerous precedent, it didn’t take long for the first ‘copycat’ theft – a life-size dugong statue from a development in Port Hinchinbrook. While this one seems to be a simple crime, it didn’t stop The Courier-Mail from linking it to the Big Mango ‘heist’: Dugong statue stolen from Port Hinchinbrook, days after Big Mango was disappeared in PR stunt.

And that’s the problem that Nando’s is going to have from now on – any time there is a similar theft committed, the media will link it back to the Big Mango stunt. Not exactly positive.

Now, that would be OK if the original stunt paid dividends for Nando’s in promoting its new product (which, by the way, is a new Mango and Lime flavour) but in doing a quick scan of mainstream and social media, I’d say the response is more like a Big Tumbleweed.

(Pictured above: “The Big Mango, Bowen, Queensland.”, Amos T Fairchild, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.5) licence.)