ARCHIVERocoMamas Declares We're Not Normal in a Bold 2019 Film
RocoMamas launched a single-film campaign titled We're Not Normal in South Africa in April 2019, created by Johannesburg agency Retroviral, positioning the brand as a deliberately unconventional fast-casual burger destination for consumers who reject the sameness of mainstream fast food advertising.
The campaign arrives as a pure brand manifesto. Rather than promoting a specific product or limited-time offer, We're Not Normal stakes out a personality — confrontational, self-aware, and proud of its own oddness. The film, the campaign's sole media asset as documented on adsoftheworld.com, treats RocoMamas' refusal to conform as the product itself. It is an assertion that a brand selling smash burgers and, notably, cheese in a sausage, cannot credibly speak in the polished, aspirational register that dominates the South African fast food category.
RocoMamas occupies a distinctive position in the South African food industry. Founded by Brian Altriche, the chain grew from three locations to 52 stores across South Africa, Namibia, and Saudi Arabia within approximately 18 months of meaningful scale, according to reporting by marklives.com. That growth trajectory gave the brand an incumbent challenger energy — big enough to advertise on television, self-aware enough to mock the act of doing so. The We're Not Normal film, published by April 14, 2019 based on the podcast episode date documented on Iono Fm, is the culmination of a creative relationship between RocoMamas and Retroviral that began in the second half of 2016, as reported by marklives.com. Clapboard rates the campaign 64 out of 100.
Retroviral identified a core consumer insight: the South African fast food audience most loyal to RocoMamas actively distrusts the category's visual and tonal conventions. In a market where McDonald's and Burger King spend heavily on glossy product-centric television, a brand built on craft burgers and experimental menu items — including cheese in a sausage — has little to gain from imitation.
South Africa's fast food sector is a growing and competitive market. The country's broader fast food industry has attracted sustained investment, with the segment forecast to reach approximately US$4.9 billion by 2026, according to alliedmarketresearch.com, though a 2019 base figure and burger-specific allocation are not clearly delineated in available public data. Within that landscape, the fast-casual tier — where RocoMamas competes — sits above quick-service chains on quality perception and below full-service restaurants on price, a positioning that demands personality to justify the premium.
Retroviral's prior work for RocoMamas demonstrated that provocation converts. The agency's 2016 ElectionBurger campaign, which featured three limited-edition burgers including one called TheJoker — the eventual customer-vote winner — delivered a reported 20% year-on-year sales growth and reached 14 million people, according to data cited by marklives.com and clapboard.com. That precedent informed the strategic ambition behind We're Not Normal: move from campaign-level stunt to sustained brand narrative. In the South African food industry, where challenger brands must compete for cultural relevance as much as footfall, a manifesto film directed at self-identified outsiders is a defensible long-term investment in brand equity.
Director Dani Hynes helmed the We're Not Normal film for production company Egg, with line producer Dumisani Mvumvu and producer Melanie Curtis overseeing physical production, as credited on adsoftheworld.com. The creative team at Retroviral was led by executive creative director Mike Sharman, the agency's founder, with creative director Kathryn McConnachie, art director Sam Whittaker, and audio handled by Sean Jefferies at Audiophile.
The creative approach treats tonal dissonance as the primary executional tool. Where conventional South African fast food advertising reaches for appetite appeal — saturated close-ups of melting cheese, slow-motion patty drops, voiceovers that promise satisfaction — the We're Not Normal film leans into the absurdist texture of the RocoMamas brand. The presence of a menu item like cheese in a sausage is not a liability to be smoothed over; it is precisely the kind of detail that signals the brand's rejection of ordinary food industry thinking.
Mike Sharman articulated the brief's governing principle in a quote published in the Damn Right, We are not Normal podcast episode hosted by Carmen Murray on iono.fm on April 14, 2019: "We're not normal and simply couldn't just make a normal TV ad. It had to be for those who expect more, who don't fit in a box and believe what we believe." That statement functions as both creative rationale and target audience definition. The film is built for a viewer who experiences mainstream fast food advertising as condescending, and who reads RocoMamas' deliberate strangeness as authenticity. Production credits for additional crew beyond those listed on adsoftheworld.com are not publicly documented.
ARCHIVENo verified performance data for the We're Not Normal campaign is publicly available across Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, or the Webby Awards, and no quantified business or media results have been published in Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, or Contagious as of the time of this writing. The campaign does not carry a confirmed award, a distinction worth drawing clearly: a separate WARC case study, titled RocoMamas: Smashing Social and awarded Silver according to warc.com, concerns the brand's always-on social community and customer service programme rather than this film.
Structural analysis of the campaign supports a qualified effectiveness reading. A single-asset film campaign released without a documented paid media plan carries inherent reach limitations, which the 64/100 Clapboard Score reflects. What the film accomplishes structurally is durable: it establishes a brand voice that does not require product rotation or seasonal refresh to remain coherent. In a South African fast food market where competitors rely on promotional cycles to drive traffic, a manifesto-format campaign builds the kind of brand memory that compounds across future activations. The ElectionBurger precedent, with its documented 20% sales uplift according to marklives.com, provides a credible performance ceiling for what Retroviral's work for RocoMamas can produce when brand equity and promotional mechanics align. We're Not Normal invests in the former, leaving measurable results to subsequent campaigns that can draw on the identity it establishes.
RocoMamas We're Not Normal is a single-film brand manifesto published in South Africa in April 2019. Created by Johannesburg agency Retroviral, the campaign rejects fast food advertising conventions and positions RocoMamas as a deliberately unconventional brand for consumers who distrust mainstream fast food culture in the South African market.
Dani Hynes directed the We're Not Normal film for production company Egg. The Retroviral creative team was led by executive creative director and agency founder Mike Sharman, with creative director Kathryn McConnachie and art director Sam Whittaker, as credited on adsoftheworld.com. Audio was handled by Sean Jefferies at Audiophile.
The We're Not Normal film did not receive a verified award from Cannes Lions, Effies, D&AD, The One Show, Clios, or the Webby Awards. A separate WARC Silver-awarded case study exists for RocoMamas, but according to warc.com it covers the brand's always-on social programme, not the 2019 film campaign.
Cheese in a sausage is a RocoMamas menu item that embodies the brand's anti-ordinary food philosophy. In the We're Not Normal campaign, such unconventional products reinforce the creative strategy: RocoMamas does not apologise for strangeness but treats it as a direct signal of authenticity to South African consumers who reject fast food conformity.
Retroviral, founded by Mike Sharman, created We're Not Normal after being appointed as RocoMamas' lead creative agency in the second half of 2016, according to marklives.com. Their prior ElectionBurger campaign in South Africa delivered a reported 20% year-on-year sales growth, establishing a track record that informed the 2019 brand manifesto film.
RocoMamas We're Not Normal deliberately inverts the approach taken by larger South African fast food competitors such as McDonald's and Burger King, which rely on product-centric, appetite-driven television advertising. Retroviral's film builds brand personality rather than promoting a specific offer, targeting consumers who identify as cultural outsiders within the fast food category.
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