KUALA LUMPUR, July 6 — Two popular food chains in Malaysia are currently engaged in an advertising war online, with Nando’s touting its originality as it fights back with good humour against McDonald’s perceived thinly-veiled dig against the former.

The advertising game started when McDonald’s Malaysia’s official Facebook page posted on July 1 a photo of its new product by the name of “Portugese Chicken Burger”, accompanied by the icon of a chicken.

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The icon featured in McDonald’s poster was a drawing of a chicken in green with a red comb and patterned dots on its body, while Nando’s chicken mascot Barci is in black with a red comb and with a red tail with a white dot pattern.

According to McDonald’s, the Portuguese Chicken Burger features a fried chicken patty dipped in a “unique piri-piri sauce”. Piri-piri or peri-peri is the African bird’s eye chilli, which Nando’s uses in sauces for its chicken.

McDonald’s has said the Portugues Chicken Burger offering is part of its “Discover the World Campaign”, after having featured flavours over the years from countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Korea and Thailand including Spicy Korean Burger.

On July 4, McDonald’s posted on its Facebook page a link to the augmented reality game called “Catching Nonando”, where players need to “catch as many Nonado Chickens as they can in 60 seconds to collect points” for discounts on the Portugese Chicken Burger.

McDonald’s had posted the game along with the caption featuring the phrase “Think you’ve got what it takes to catch the sly Nonando?”

The Nonando word, which can be pronounced as No Nando, appeared to be a dig at Nando’s.

Hours after McDonald’s blasted out its “Catching Nonando” game, Nando’s Malaysia’s responded by posting on its Facebook page a post with the caption “No time for fake PERi-PERi”.

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Nando’s Malaysia — which is known for its catchy and sometimes cheeky posters — posted a poster “The Real OG since 1987” along with the caption, asserting its position as the original outlet in its use of the African bird eye’s chilli.

McDonald’s yesterday morning then posted its “Catching Nonando” game again along with the period July 4 to July 24, where it told Facebook users that playing it would give them a chance to win fabulous prizes when they “catch Nonando”.

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