Jeong

Why it works

Since 1989 Orion has sold its chocolate-coated marshmallow cake not simply as a snack but as a token of jeong, the Korean sense of warm, unspoken attachment that grows between people over time. The commercials show Choco Pies quietly passed between teachers and pupils, family members and neighbours, set to a jingle insisting that nothing needs to be said because the feeling comes from the heart. It is studied as a defining example of a brand claiming a national emotion: scholars have traced how three decades of Choco Pie ads helped shape popular ideas of jeong, from the wordless affection of the first campaign to later calls to say it out loud. Orion credits the strategy with carrying the snack abroad, adapting it with the character for benevolence in China and the Vietnamese word tinh, and the Korea Herald reported more than 18.3 billion Choco Pies sold worldwide by 2015.