Creating a Brand Mascot: A Guide for Businesses

Creating a Brand Mascot: A Guide for Businesses

A brand mascot is that character that breathes life to your brand and makes your business more engaging. Read on to discover tips when making this character.

A crucial component of a successful brand is its ability to communicate effectively with the audience. If you want your brand to be more engaging and personable, you'll need to create a company mascot. Businesses, such as Nintendo and KFC, harness the power of a corporate character to captivate their customers regularly.

A brand mascot, however, is more than just an effective design. Making a character involves content marketing strategies and well-planned branding.

Before you hire a character designer or outsource 3D modeling work to a professional, consider these three suggestions when making a successful mascot for your business:

Choose the Right Character to Represent Your Brand

2D or 3D mascots come in all figures and shapes. A few of the common mascot types used in marketing are the following:

  • Human Characters - They serve as stylized representations of a person. A human mascot makes a brand relatable and familiar in the eyes of a consumer. A couple of examples include KFC's Colonel Sanders and Procter & Gamble's Mr. Clean.
  • Object Characters - These characters are inanimate objects that typically have anthropomorphic traits. They're an excellent choice for promoting a specific product with a unique shape. A few popular object mascots include the M&M spokescandies, Bibendum (the Michelin Man) and Poppin' Fresh (the Pillsbury Doughboy).
  • Animal Characters - These brand ambassadors can represent the natural features of a product. They can also signify a brand's archetypal characteristics. Famous examples include the Duracell Bunny, Tony the Tiger (mascot of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes) and Geico Gecko.

Think About the Personality of Your Brand Mascot

The mascot of your company isn't just a speechless design positioned close to your logo. A brand ambassador in the digital world comes to life and interacts directly with your audience. Given this, you have to allot some time in creating the personality of your corporate character.

When making the personality of your mascot, a lot of the work goes to selecting between different archetypes.

A few guide questions to help you shape the personality of your character are:

  • Is the mascot a student or a teacher? A mascot with a "student" archetype is a novice in their niche. This character learns along with your audience. On the other hand, the "teacher" archetype is a knowledgeable and experienced mascot who teaches your audience about your niche and your products or services.
  • Is the mascot sarcastic, funny or sweet? A character can have a sarcastic personality (think of the mascot of Wendy's and how she roasted people on Twitter). The mascot could also be an entertainer by making hilarious jokes. The third option is to make your character patient and benevolent. Take note that these categories are not mutually exclusive. Feel free to mix them up to make your mascot more unpredictable and nuanced.
  • What are the mascot's human and animal traits? When you create an object or animal mascot, you want to make them look and act like real people. Your character, for instance, can speak, dress up like a white-collar worker or fly like an eagle. You could even mix human and animal traits to make your brand mascot more memorable, interesting and unique.

Create a Visual and Content Plan for Your Character

Although you don't have to come up with a comprehensive strategy for your character, you need a rough content and visual plan in advance. This lets you clarify exactly what you need for your mascot and helps you plan your marketing budget better.

The first thing that you should work on is the story behind your brand mascot. Although backing your corporate character up with a story might appear unnecessary, this element can help you come up with a content plan and give you lots of creative content ideas.

When designing a story, you don't need to write a complete diary or a novel of your mascot's life. Just establish a few pinpoints to begin your character's adventures.

Once you have the story written down, think about how this mascot is going to appear in the following:

  • Your Company Website - Use your brand mascot as a theme image on your website. You could also put your character in your FAQ or Support page. Your mascot will help visitors explore your site.
  • Your Social Media - You could add several illustrations of your brand mascot in banners and social media ads. Another suggestion is to have your mascot answer product-related questions from social media users.
  • On YouTube - Use your corporate character as a channel cover, profile or thumbnail image. If you're planning to animate your mascot, make sure you discuss this matter with your designer.

A mascot will make your brand more eye-catching, engaging and personable. If you want this corporate character to have a lasting effect, use them as consistently as possible.

Posted by inGenium Ltd

inGenium Ltd

iNGENIUM Ltd. is an software development company from EU which delivers a full range of custom .NET, web and mobile solutions for different business to meet partner's demand.

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