Happy Otter

Design: Stratedgy
Location: India
Project Type: Produced
Client: Happy Otter
Product Launch Location: Global
Packaging Contents: Consumer Foods
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Paper
Printing Process: Digital printing

We rebranded the happy otter universe across product lines to position it as modern India’s most convenient cooking aid brand.

The new Indian consumer is eager to experiment – be it food, fashion and everything in between and beyond. Those who are well travelled want to experience global delights back home too, and the aspirants look forward to sampling global fare on the home turf. With a growing culture to eat out, and India’s affinity towards global cuisines, the trend of cooking ‘restaurant like’, international cuisines at home has only just taken flight.

At the onset, Happy Otter found validation for their product’s taste and quality by successfully serving the country’s top hotels, restaurants and cafés; before it’s foray to the consumer segment. While serving businesses, the product mix took precedence over having an effective brand and communication strategy.
There was much to learn and unlearn in order to help reinvent Happy Otter as a B2C brand, and there began our exciting association.

The Indian food services market in India (organised and unorganised) is projected to grow at a rate of 10% over the next five years to reach Rs. 5,52,000 crore by 2022! The opportunity to gain a share of this huge market had to be met with an effective plan.

The challenges of not having an effective brand strategy had to be tackled early on to poise the Otter as India’s go-to brand in this segment.

BRAND IDENTITY SYSTEM
A thorough understanding of the Happy Otter universe, and the existing brand mark, enabled us to make some much-needed re-branding decisions.

For one, the founders chose the name ‘Happy Otter’ because otters are always hungry. Therefore, we needed to make this visual connection with the logo mark. Secondly, we needed to arrive at a unique colour space for the brand. Moreover, we needed to ensure the maximum scalability and adaptability of the brand mark.

Finally, having created the brand mark, we personified the otter to become a mascot for the brand which would seamlessly tie in all our supporting brand communication.

PACKAGING DESIGN
The challenge here was to create a seamless visual language for products across all 15 product ranges, and for all future brand extensions. We created an information architecture that was consistent across all 350+ products. Our next step was to give each product it’s own unique standing. We developed a visual language with distinct typographic units and illustrations for each range. The other elements in the information architecture were consistent, thus creating a language that was extremely adaptive and consistent.