By René Hardwick, National Onion Association Director of Public and Industry Relations
The onion industry has endured decades without a mascot or theme to really impress new buyers. For many onion marketers out there, the big concern is about the brand, and rightly so.
But while your brand might mean quality, or nutrition, or safety, or uniqueness, the onion will always be the onion to buyers.
Many don’t know one brand from another, or the many qualities an onion can bring into their overall health or cooking. They just know they either like onions or they don’t.
That’s why we at the National Onion Association (NOA) have been working to market the onion – all onions – as nutritious, body-building, immunity-boosting, flavor-enhancing goodness through Nature’s Ninja for the last two years.
The concept of Nature’s Ninja is simple. Ninjas have skills. When you think of the onion, the onion has skills – just like a ninja:
- Survivor — From its hard, papery skin keeping bacteria at bay to its pungent juices preserving itself, the onion was built to survive the elements.
- Master of disguise — From the outside, the onion seems unassuming and simple. But there’s a warrior inside ready to fight disease.
- Resourceful — The onion also has many properties to keep those who eat it healthy. While it helps sustain a healthy gut, it can also help your mental health – have you have a good cry lately?
- Adaptable — It can tempt the taste buds in a variety of forms to create just the right mixture of tastes to add the perfect touch to your meals.
- Stealthy — Who hasn’t minced an onion to slip into recipes without being noticed? We know chefs who have turned their onions into butter to help infuse onion flavor into their dishes.
The NOA has membership throughout the country selling all kinds of great onions, from Vidalia to Walla Walla to Sunions. You may have heard this before: it was an onion first. And frankly, not all onion growers and packers have their own marketing programs.
That’s in part why we created Nature’s Ninja, to represent ALL onions. After a COVID -19 delay, the NOA now has created its Nature’s Ninja Marketing Program, which allows our membership to use our trademarked Nature’s Ninja in their marketing messages of all kinds, as well as packaging.
The program is a way to market onions – mostly the unbranded ones – with a fun, colorful character that can reach younger buyers who perhaps know nothing about the many ninja skills the onion has.
The program allows NOA members to use Nature’s Ninja on their wineglass labels with a small percentage of the costs going back to the NOA marketing program. We offer it to members only, who use NOA members to produce their labels. The cost is $250 per year and certification that your organization adheres to food safety guidelines.
If you think about it, it’s a pretty easy and not-so-expensive way to get some marketing into your onion program. We have a special website, www.naturesninja.org, that has recipes for each type of onion, nutrition information, blog posts and trivia to which the labels can drive traffic. We have ninja dolls and ninja lapel pins for giveaways (at a small cost), and with proper notice, we can order more in bulk. That’s a far cry from spending hundreds of thousands each year for marketing services. You also would be free to use Nature’s Ninja in your social media messaging; we have many ready-made Facebook and Instagram posts.
Onion consumption per capita has been hovering around 20 pounds per year for the last several years. Isn’t it about time to move the needle? If you’d like to take advantage of this program but you’re not an NOA member, signing up is easy. Our membership prices are some of the lowest in the country for associations and lobbying organizations. You can find all the information you need on membership at www.onions-usa.org/members/membership. Or feel free to call the office at (970) 353-5895.
