Brand Mascots – How to Leverage them in Branding

While crafting a people-centric message or product, the approach should be as human-centric as possible. One way to do this is the optimal use of a mascot.

A brand mascot can infuse a new life into a business. Leveraging this influential tool can help you reach new demographics.

The main idea behind a mascot is to strengthen brand identity. A visual association with your brand gives its name a spot in the minds of your target audience.

This helps you to have a top-of-the-mind recall and awareness, which can certainly drive great sales.

Come checkout time, your business will be the first thing they’ll think about.

Mascots possess the ability to make a business go viral. But one should know how to use them.

In this blog, we shall help you exactly to do that.

Quick Knowledge

Difference Between Branding & Marketing

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What is exactly a Brand Mascot?

A mascot is a character or a personified image used as a symbolic representation of a brand or a personality.  While mascots have been there for a very long time, the increased use of the internet has given them a whole new life.

In addition to giving your brand identity, mascots also help to build a connection between your brand and the audience.

A brand mascot can turn into an ageless brand representative that can bear testing times and trends and keep your brand strong.

 

What’s so good about Brand Mascots?

Brand mascots are being used widely. But what’s so good about them? Have a look at some of their benefits.

• Personify your brand’s identity: From within a crowd, if you hear a different voice you may probably listen to it. This also applies to branding.

 

By giving your brand human traits, you can help it stand apart from the crowd.

 

Mascots give your brand a distinct and recognizable personality, making it unique and different from all the similar brands offering similar products around it.

 

Mascots can extend the horizons of personification. They allow marketers to build startling and catchy looks and make fanciful characters alive.

 

• Better communication: By giving your business a mascot, you can engage productively with your users. None of us like being spoken to without a face, and this holds true for brands as well.

 

Audiences like to engage in conversation and be a part of business activity if it has a face joined to it.

 

A mascot is a good connector between the user and the product. Just change its appearance, for instance, clothes, activities, mood, etc. and you are ready to deliver a quick message to the user.

 

Mascots can offer visual prompts with numerous facial expressions, reflect the mood of the user, deliver helpful commands in an app onboarding tutorial, and congratulate on any accomplishments.

 

• Better recognizability: Most of us tend to recognize images faster than text. The same can be said for mascots in comparison to abstract images.

 

Mascots take everything from the aptitudes of human memory: we catch them fast and easily recall them due to certain associations.

 

All of these are critical to building strong brand awareness and building patterns in user interfaces.

 

How to effectively utilize Brand Mascots?

Mascots serve as great representatives for businesses. To make the most out of them, here are a few tips you can put to use and perform successful branding.

• Give your mascot a name: Naming your mascot differently can be optimal for your SEO. Your brand can rank higher in SERPs for keywords that contain the characters of your mascot’s name.

 

While the name should be eccentric, it should also be catchy. This will be beneficial for your audience to recall it easily.

 

• Sell merchandise: A mascot can provide you with modern autonomy to craft various types of striking merchandise with your character.

 

Building high-quality illustrations and limited edition designs, high-class promo products such as t-shirts, mugs, bags, and so on can help generate desire for them among your audiences.

 

• Use in social media: Social media is the best place where you can popularise your brand character. By posting shareable visuals like infographics or funny and amusing illustrations, you can share your brand story in a funny and relatable manner.

 

You can also create social media accounts for your mascot. It’s enjoyable, sharable, and connects your brand with your audience on a different level.

 

• Take them to your blog posts: Most blogs that stand out are creative enough to incorporate mascots into their posts.

 

Whether you include your mascots in images or videos, a mascot in an appealing costume can give your users a memorable visual.

 

• Promote your products: A mascot can assign uniqueness to your products/services among your competitors. This helps your users understand immediately what they are looking at.

 

You can use your mascot as part of the packaging design and add it to your website. You can even let it convey information about your products/services.

 

 

• Make it a part of your logo: You may use your character as a logo. However, you may also skip it. Instead, you can cleverly project your mascot interacting with your logo on your website or other merchandise.

This will help your audience connect with your brand automatically.

 

Final Words

Mascots are the narrators of your business. They convey a message about your brand with just visuals. They stay in people’s minds, making your brand recognizable. They make your brand timeless. With a mascot, you can craft a charming business story and bring your brand to life. In fact, some businesses that no longer exist are still remembered moderately because of the iconic mascots they had.

At the end of the day, a brand mascot is a tool for marketing. And it’s only effective only when done right.

Yes. And if not done properly, many mascots can be received negatively or can be seen as controversial. Some may not be able to even make an impact simply fail.

Thus, while creating a mascot, you need to make sure you don’t go overboard with making the mascot too ‘hip’ in order to appeal to the audience.

This can augment the risk of pandering to stereotypes and make your brand story demeaning.