How to Use the Power of Mascots to Market Your Brand?

Apart from conducting research, building a sales funnel, identifying and targeting potential prospects, and channelizing your products and services through effective marketing, sometimes you need LUCK! Yes, you heard it correctly, to be clear, I'm not here to promote superstition.

Even though top brands believe in lucky charm, I know it will sound a bit odd to say in today's era that some brands continue to exist by following mascot marketing in their brands.

Yes, some businesses indeed adopt mascot marketing intending to gain sales. The mascot, which is referred to as a "lucky charm" in French, is a virtual personality or character that many firms have adopted lately, for instance, whenever you hear the brand name ‘Cheetos’, the very first thing that comes to your mind, is the picture of ‘the cheetah’. It could be an image of a person, an animal, or an object that has come to symbolize the company.

For some groups of people, the mascot is considered positive energy that carries luck and ultimately generates maximum profit for a brand. Notable, one of the intelligent brand elements is- Mascot marketing which plays an influential role in humanizing a brand.

There are various types of mascots you could use in your branding from corporate mascots, animals/objects mascots to sports mascots which are appalling to the eye of the public.

You may wonder, what are the qualities a mascot marketing inherent? How can a slightly amusing caricature entice people or even become a public image? And most significantly, how could you still believe in luck, if it is not entirely done via effective marketing? To those curious cats out there, this article is for you to crack all the ques about mascot marketing in brands.

Benefits of Using Mascots in Branding
How to Use Mascots to Market Your Brand?

Benefits of Using Mascots in Branding

Connect Emotionally

A mascot is a tool that connects an emotional thread between the company and the public (users). As the mascot is designed more user-centred it triggers emotions as well as provides customers feedback about their company, which results in easy decision-making for the businesses.

As I said earlier, apart from logo and banner promotion, a mascot represents your company’s spirit/story effectively. For instance, the commonwealth sports event mascot known as Perry, a multi-coloured bull jazzy bull with an athletic build connects a relationship between Birmingham with the animal Bull.

Effective Communication

Another major advantage of adopting mascot marketing in your brand enhances effective communication with the public. Just by changing the appearance of the mascot (for example- mood, outfit, or avatar) according to the prompt, you can easily convey the message to the right group of customers.

Memorability and Recognition

Similarly, when you think of Amul dairy products, a girl comes to mind—the image was a hand-drawn cartoon of a young Indian girl dressed in a polka-dotted frock with blue hair and a half pony tied up.

Thereby, a mascot is used as a virtual image that can be easily recognisable and more memorable than abstract images (example-text) while creating a strong brand awareness pattern.

Strengthen Brand Voice, Tone, and Character

A mascot is nothing but a character that represents your brand’s voice, ideas, and tone of message in a virtual pattern. They are a social medium to capture users’ attention to buy your products.

Furthermore, a mascot is considered a direct communication, where speech bubbles, provide visual prompts with various facial expressions and reflect the mood of the user with different graphic variations of the mascot can be done with the help of UI design.

Virality

Of course, if you develop a memorable and unique mascot for your brand, you can become more well-known. Speaking of virality, the mascot of your company can be used to create memes, such as "Gritty evolution from mascot to the meme that caused the brand gain popularity over time, which eventually increases desirability."

Creates Original Personification

Disney's mascot, Mickey Mouse—reflects aspects of adventurous enjoyment while also being calm and gentle, wearing his iconic red shorts, yellow shoes, and white gloves. To make its brand more identifiable and original in its mascot marketing, the company develops a special personality of mascots.

Visual Marking

Mascots open up a variety of possibilities for the visual branding of various identity carriers, applications, or websites because they may be included in logos, interface illustrations, chatbots, brand promotions, etc.

How to Use Mascots to Market Your Brand?

To get the most out of mascots, they must be used correctly. To that end, we have provided some advice on how to market your brand with mascots.

Use Mascots on Social Media

We are all aware of how effective social media is at bringing in large amounts of online traffic and clients. These days, social media is home to several well-known firms in the IT, medical, automotive, and other industries. They understand how to harness this channel's potential to establish a significant market presence.

Mascots are undoubtedly a great way to add a creative element to your social media banners. Because so much depends on it, you must have excellent design skills to do it. Try to seek assistance from any agency or professional designer if you don't have much experience in design.

Offering specialised design services, numerous digital agencies are operating in the market. When it comes to creating mascots for social media banners, you can get some helpful advice from them, which can strengthen your online reputation.

Use as a Logo

Your brand's logo serves as its key representation across all platforms. It must be distinctive from the competition if you wish to establish an identity. In addition to having a distinctive logo, it must increase its overall engagement and vibrancy to gain a stunning presence.

A good mascot may help by adding some much-needed shine to your logo. You may develop the logo's presence across all branding channels by pairing it with a mascot. This is because all forms of marketing, from print publications to internet marketing, will promote your logos.

Your artistic mascot will therefore be included with it wherever it is published. This will gradually turn your mascot into an automatic component of branding, boosting the popularity of your company.

Use to Promote Your Products and Services

Mascot advertising is an innovative strategy that yields higher conversion rates than conventional marketing. Using this strategy gives your items a competitive edge over the rest of the market, which is its main benefit.

The majority of products in the market are simply advertised, with little preference given to the use of innovative methods. By incorporating mascots into your product branding, you may provide a special touch.

You can advertise a free giveaway by including complimentary mascot collectables with the merchandise. Although it won't break the bank, this will help you improve your brand recognition in the marketplace.

Offering free mascots will boost interest in the products by utilizing a variety of clever characters. It would be economical and a terrific idea to draw children.

Use as CSR agents

CSR aids in customer connection development and enables businesses to create a robust consumer base. To improve connection with the public, the CSR interface should be distinctive. Therefore, employing mascots as CSR representatives seems like a good idea. It can strengthen a sign of individuality in your assistance so that you can communicate with consumers more effectively.

The mascot serves as a way to engage with potential customers in addition to being one of the company's key identities. People can always receive more individualized messages thanks to its effective branding strategy.

Use Mascots on Blogs

One of the hottest trends nowadays is blogging, which individuals use to remain current on global events. The blogging format evolves along with the industry's growth. Because readers prefer to notice a few other things as well, writing a high-quality blog post is simply not enough anymore.

To increase interaction, you can utilize mascots with them. Your blog will be innovative thanks to this strategy, which is unique. Put a mascot in the sidebar or create a banner advertisement that appears in the centre of every blog.

Your brand strategy's desired style will determine everything. The location of this character should be considered because it is a bit imaginative.

Use Mascot Design on Merchandise

An excellent way to strengthen your brand is to use official merchandise featuring mascot artwork. T-shirts, hoodies, backpacks, and other items are examples of official business swag.

By enabling people to identify with your mascot's persona, it will naturally aid in its market recognition. This method, which is employed by many businesses, aids in both the sale of the goods as well as the attraction of customers to the actual products.

Conclusion

Use mascots to make your user interface design more interactive for the user. If used correctly and at the appropriate place on websites, they are quite effective at capturing viewers' attention. It is advisable to put mascots on a website's home and signup pages to inspire visitors to complete the desired actions. We have therefore provided some advice on how to use mascots to advance your brand.

FAQs

How do you create a brand mascot?

Add depth to your brand's mascot, understand the colour psychology, and name your mascot that is easy to remember.

Why do brands create mascots?

Brands create mascots to engage consumers and promote their brands and increase visibility.

What are the benefits of mascots in branding?

Benefits of mascots in branding include:

• Connect Emotionally
• Effective Communication
• Creates Original Personification
• Visual Marking
• Virality
• Strengthen Brand Voice, Tone, and Character
• Memorability and Recognition