One of the elements of branding that is definitely worth mentioning is the brand mascot. You will also find such names as the brand avatar or the brand character. Whatever you call it, its creation can drastically change the way you communicate with your audience, and how you build your branding strategy.
By reading further you’ll learn what is in fact a brand character, and what it can do to your brand. Also, how to create one! Keep on reading.
What is a brand mascot?
A brand mascot is an ambassador of your brand, the spokesperson. It’s a link that stands between your brand and its audience. Example: the M&Ms characters. When a person thinks of the M&Ms, the first thing that comes to mind is the characters we see in all ads.
Why do you might need a brand mascot?
There are many reasons why a brand character can be beneficial to your brand, here are the most major ones:
Recognizability
People tend to remember characters a lot better than abstract things. That is why your logo featuring a mascot has higher chances to be recognized, than a logo featuring geometric shapes. If a person sees your brand mascot everywhere, believe us, your brand will definitely be the one they hold in their mind in a certain category.
Trustworthiness
Whatever you do, it’s hard to believe a faceless brand. But what if it has a face? Even if you choose a cow to represent your brand, it’s still easier to trust than nothing at all.
Personalization
One of the biggest benefits that brand characters have is that they add to the personalization effect. By seeing the brand mascots, your audience feels like they are addressing them specifically. They will believe that your brand talks directly to them.
How to create a brand mascot?
Analyze your brand
In order to create a brand mascot that will personify your business, you first need to know your business. Here are the steps you want to take:
- Learn your target audience. Before you do anything with your branding, you need to learn the audience you’re doing it for. The key demographic, the hobbies, the interest, and characters: everything from this list will influence your further marketing and branding. And of course, the mascot too.
- Define the brand’s archetype. The archetype in itself is the character of your brand, a personification that allows your audience to relate to your brand. Having defined the archetype, you will learn how the brand communicates with the world, how it behaves in certain situations.
- Once you learn your archetype, you can proceed with shaping it into the brand personality. How do people perceive a brand, to what traits can a specific customer relate when using a brand? These traits are expressed as adjectives that answer the mentioned questions. For example, youthful, kind, elegant, manly, etc.
- Based on the image you want to have, then proceed with creating your brand identity. Brand identity includes the logo, fonts, color palette, etc. Basically, the visual representation of your brand.
Note: If you’re going to proceed with creating your brand character, you might wanna add it to your logo as well. It’s not necessary, but it is a common practice.
Define the nature of the brand mascot
Now that you understand your brand deeply, you can proceed with deciding what mascot you’re going to create: a human, animal, or object.
Traditionally, the mascots are based on the industry and services a brand provides. For example, if you’re creating a personal brand, go with a human mascot; if you’re offering something related to animals, go with the animal; if you’re selling objects, go with objects.
However traditional it may be, it’s not always the case. Starbucks has a human mascot while selling coffee. Duracell has an animal mascot while selling batteries. In the end, it all comes down to what better represents your particular brand.
We highly recommend deciding on the nature of the brand character before sending the task to your designer.
Create a story
Once you and your designer have the image created, it’s time to create a story for your character. You need to think of its character, behavior, and story to make sure it’s believable. In all of your communication points, you will have to make sure you’re developing the character somewhat: make sure it’s not cliched.
Have every brand identity element done? Make sure to create a brand book out of it
Gingersauce is professional a tool for creating brand guidelines, that combines smart automatic features and your creativity. It’s a professional tool – meaning, it won’t do a half-baked job, leaving you with a mediocre result.
Add all the brand identity elements as you go and receive an awesome and professional brand book in the outcome. Time — saved, the client’s expectations — surpassed.