Some Sauces May Need Celebrities, but others have something to say, as Pedro’s enters the Siya Sauce Conversation

So, Nando’s has Siya Kolisi, a limited-edition sauce, a campaign featuring his friends, and a whole lot of conversation around what happens when a sporting personality becomes part of a food brand’s storytelling. Enter Pedro’s, apparently watching from the sidelines with a bottle of sauce and a sense of humour.

This is not a review, but in a cheeky video advertisement on social media, the Pedro’s brand begins with what looks like a covered sauce bottle. The covering is slowly removed, only to reveal a familiar hand gesture, “nchu” in xhosa, the local equivalent of “sycke, I made you look”… before the words “made you look” appear on screen. Then comes the sauce, poured generously over a patty, with the message: “Some sauces need a celebrities. Ours is the Celebrity.” the Pedro’s logo closes the show. No names mentioned. No lengthy explanation. Just a little mischief, served with sauce.

No Springboks were used in the making of this ad

Now, if you have been following the Nando’s and Siya Kolisi collaboration, you will probably recognise what Pedro’s is doing. It is borrowing the momentum of a conversation that another brand has already invested in creating. Nando’s has put celebrity influence, product development and a familiar circle of friends at the centre of its campaign. Pedro’s has taken that same moment and presented a different proposition.. perhaps the product itself is the star. It is a clever bit of positioning because the advert does not need to name Siya, Nando’s or the Siya Sauce for audiences to make the connection. The audience does some of the marketing work themselves. That little “made you look” reveal is doing more than delivering a joke, it invites viewers to recognise the reference, enjoy the cheekiness and share the moment.

There is a marketing lesson here about piggybacking, but perhaps we should call it opportunistic creativity. When one brand creates a cultural or commercial moment, competitors are not obliged to sit quietly and admire the campaign from a distance. They can observe the conversation, identify an opening and find a way to insert their own product into it. Pedro’s is effectively saying that while another sauce may need a celebrity to get people talking, its own sauce has enough personality to command attention. Whether consumers agree is another matter, but getting us to stop scrolling long enough to consider the claim is already part of the exercise. And that is the interesting point we found brain-tickling… Pedro’s is not necessarily competing with the celebrity, it is competing for the audience’s attention, appetite and product preference.

This is also where healthy competition deserves a little recognition. When done right, this kind of brand banter can be good for the market. It gives consumers something to compare, encourages brands to be more creative and reminds businesses that a competitor’s campaign does not have to be treated as a threat. Sometimes it is an invitation to sharpen your own message. The important part is that the competition stays clever, no misleading claims, no personal attacks, no need to diminish another brand’s work. Nando’s gets to celebrate its collaboration with Siya Kolisi, while Pedro’s gets to make a playful case for its own product. Both brands have an opportunity to benefit from the attention, and consumers get to enjoy the spectacle. That is a much more interesting advertising environment than brands simply taking turns speaking at us.

We recently looked at the Nando’s collaboration through the lens of how one campaign can bring together multiple commercial assets, a sporting personality, creative talent, friendship, food and brand experience. Pedro’s has now added another layer to that story, the competitor response. One brand invests in making a moment, another recognises the moment and turns it into an opportunity of its own. It is a reminder that marketing does not always happen in isolation, and that sometimes the most interesting part of a campaign is what the competition does next. So, Nando’s brought the celebrity to the sauce, Pedro’s says its sauce is the celebrity. I personally love this as it has spunk, a different and refreshing appeal and that spark of a little fun, at this point, I might just go try out both Nando’s and Pedro’s sauces, because when a brand creates the conversation, we the consumers get to make the most of it..