In this day and age of quick commerce and instant gratification, one particular category’s products sell like hot cakes. Salty snacks are the ideal companion of consumers while they are binge watching a TV series on Netflix during the weekend or attending a marquee event or celebrating the festive season and New Year’s. Usually, salty snacks in India are dominated either by the salty snacks on bhujiya side or with potato chips or tortilla chips.
Enter Korean FMCG company Orion and its flagship offering the Korean snack Turtle Chips known for its 4X crunch. Turtle Chips comes with a 4-layer shape, which resembles the shell of a tortoise. To cater to its target audience – generation Alpha and Gen Z, Orion has roped in Bollywood actor Palak Tiwari as the brand ambassador for the salty product line, Turtle Chips in India.
Saurabh Saith, CEO and MD, Orion, India says, “Most people still know us as a Choco Pie company, but Orion is into multiple categories. Orion has categories in certain countries like China, Korea, even Vietnam where we are competing with the likes of Mars and Mondelez. Orion is well entrenched into salty snacks and taking on the likes of Pepsico in these countries.”
“We were clear about not restricting ourselves to only Choco Pie and hence we entered the snacks category and launched Turtle Chips. It’s been 9 months since we have been scaling the brand and recently we got Palak Tiwari as a brand ambassador, ” he adds.
Find out more about how Orion is differentiating itself from established biggies like Mars and Mondelez.
Edited excerpts
What was the genesis of the campaign?
We are a young and playful brand. We don’t take ourselves seriously, and we are here in a very different manner in terms of look and taste. Hence we are looking for someone youthful and who connects with Gen Z. Our core target audience in terms of consumption starts from the age group of 5 and goes up to 20.
In our consumer research, it was revealed that half of the people were not able to consume our star product – Spicy Devil as it was extremely spicy for their palette. Interestingly, it is currently Orion’s pure lead flavor doing by far the best.
We are small, but we are already creating ripples in the market because of the bold flavors we have launched. Hence Palak was fitting the bill on that front.
The entire campaign revolves around how all of us are nice and good but still there is a bit of devil inside us. Palak goes equally well with our other flavours like Mexican Lime because of the international look and feel she brings to the table.
How are you differentiating yourself from the competition?
Our vision is to deliver world class superior products at reasonable cost. We never say we want to sell cheap or premium products. It’s a proprietary product for us. It’s a four layered corn chip, with a distinct flavour that is anything but massy. We will launch furthermore options for consumers establishing ourselves as a serious salty snack player.
What are Orion’s plans of diversification
The large markets of salty snacks are Punjab and Tamil Nadu. We have received phenomenal response from the North East. It’s in the same bracket as Delhi, Mumbai for us. The number is going as high as 30-32 percent via e-commerce for us. Certain towns like Bhubaneshwar also led to decent sales.
What are some interesting consumer trends and insights you are observing in the industry?
Indian consumers are ready to experiment. They are craving differentiated products. In the last few years, we have all seen a lot of D2C brands. Travelling has increased; consumers have also become more aspirational. Needless to say, people weren’t happy with the same old potato chip which they have been consuming for the past 20-30 years, While Gen Z is more attuned to experiment, even the millennials want to try out new things during the weekends.
While the tried and tested legacy brands go back in time and have a role to play, the experimentation and aspirational part and wanting novelty in terms of international and world class snacks is a big trend.
How is Orion innovating its products?
We started in 2021 with the launch of the Indian factory. As far as Turtle chip is concerned, we first imported it from Korea, sold it for the first 4-5 months, and got really confident about the category and product. We were very clear about the fact that if Orion was launching a product in India, it can’t be just cut-copy-paste. Hence, we adopted the Korean product for India and made it 100 percent vegetarian. We have a strong research and development team here led by a Korean. We developed Indianised flavours as well as international flavours from scratch. The packing was taken care of by the India marketing team here. This was clutter breaking because the packaging is playful in nature, it showcases a turtle and represents the shape of the product itself.
What kind of marketing strategies is Orion leveraging?
Organizations like us who are relatively younger in the Indian landscape have a great advantage, because the philosophy we follow internally is that here in India we will work like a startup. We will work fast; we are a digital first company for all our products. Hence we compete head on with any of the biggies; we don’t restrict Turtle chips to regular channels. We treat e-commerce platforms as an extension of our marketing.
However, we won’t be restricting ourselves only to Instagram and YouTube. We also have plans around connected tv and OTT, and in regards to traditional advertising, we are considering print and outdoor.
Orion also leverages partnerships as part of its marketing strategy. Orion was the official snacking partner for Punjab Kings in International Premier League (IPL) 2023. Orion had also partnered with quick commerce company Zepto, during the festive season.