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How a Brand Mascot Can Make Your Business More Personable

Rick Enrico May 27, 2017

The primary purpose of a mascot is to help build and strengthen brand identity. It’s also a good way to reinforce top-of-mind awareness. When people see your mascot in a constant basis, they become more primed to put your business in their mind map. Come checkout time, your business will be the first thing they’ll think about. In other words, you’ll be their official go-to brand.

We like assigning human characteristics to animals and objects because it helps us make an emotional connection with them. We can understand them better when we have obvious similarities.

Uniqueness and differentiation are two of the most important things that a business should possess in the now-saturated economic industry. Fortunately, this is where a brand mascot can help. A mascot is essentially an extension of your business that explores the more creative and customer-centric side of your brand. By personifying your brand, it creates an emotional bond that bridges the gap between you and your target audience.

The said bond can create a sense of continuity that can make your customers feel more at ease and comfortable with your business. The mascot will assure them that they’re dealing with something familiar and reliable.

Brand mascots that easily connect with customers are more likely to inspire them to engage in conversation. Compared to flat logos and faceless corporate staffers, mascots can actively encourage customers to take part in brand-related activities.

However, there’s an important caveat you have to remember: In order for your mascot to effectively engage the audience, it should have a sense of life in it. It should feel like it’s alive, and not just another robotic and unfeeling entity whose only possible purpose is to bore the audience and cause them to be more detached from the brand. An example of a dynamic brand mascot that engages the audience well is SlideGenius’s very own SlideGuy. He’s hip, he’s suave, and he sure looks like he hangs out with cool people a lot. He’s the perfect face that communicates what kind of an A-okay presentation design company SlideGenius is.

in social media

In a marketing world dominated by digital media, it would be a sin to not give your brand mascot its own and separate social media assets. When used optimally, a mascot can be the perfect tool to make your social media profiles stand out.

Indeed, a study conducted by Synthesio, a global social listening platform, found that mascots generally contributed to a higher percentage of engagement in social media compared to celebrity endorsers. And that’s not all. As you can observe, self-promotion done by a brand mascot seems more natural and more appropriate compared to one done by a person, whether a celebrity or a corporate staffer.

• Planters’ Mr. Peanut. Mr. Peanut has been around since 1916, or at least he says so on his Facebook page. If this is true, then Mr. Peanut has been in existence for over 100 years, and he’s still going strong today. Perhaps his success is due to his unconventional appearance? Or maybe it’s because Robert Downey, Jr. lent him his voice in the past? Or maybe it’s because Bill Hader is now the new voice of this character? Whatever caused it, Mr. Peanut’s success is proof that mascots can sell a business.
• Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger. Who hasn’t seen Tony the Tiger? Who hasn’t heard his catchphrase, “They’re grrrrreat!” This iconic mascot is everywhere — from grocery aisles to Twitter. And he’s always talking about his love for Frosted Flakes and other things.
• M&M’s characters. Did you know that there are six M&M characters? The sarcastic Red, the cool Blue, the simple Yellow, the paranoid Orange, the alluring Green, and of course, the authoritative Ms. Brown. Combined, these characters have over ten million fans on Facebook.