Mascot Power for Effective Branding

It has never been a secret for marketers as well as designers that most people like communication, reflecting attention on them personally. The element of personification thoughtfully applied in the product can boost positive user experience and enhance brand image and brand awareness. That is one reason why creating mascots is often part of general design concepts and content strategy.

In our article about illustration potential in user interfaces, we have already mentioned mascots and characters, providing some general ideas on how their implementation can improve UI concepts as well as become the foundation for solid and strong branding. So, today let’s analyze in more detail what are the advantages and secrets of mascot magic and when they are applicable.

The essence of a mascot

Mascots are images, usually personified, which in most cases represent the brand, product, or service identity and therefore become its symbolic convention via the whole application or website as well as the branded items and promotional activities.

Andre Landscape mascot concept

Mascot becomes an element of identity and an interconnector between the user and the product. In many cases, the mascot is the primary element of communication and interaction; therefore, across states, it can become the primary way to deliver the message to the user.

The business practice of successful companies shows that thoughtfully designed mascots can work even better than product endorsements with the help of a famous person. Mascots can reflect any traits of character, follow any style needed for product positioning, and communicate with the customer via a wide set of visual techniques. Mascots push the limits of personification, creating unexpected combinations of elements and bringing fantastic, non-existent characters to life.

Designing mascots for customers, we have already checked their great power as a multipurpose and comprehensive design element. Efficient mascots should be based on thorough user research, analyzing needs, wishes, and expectations of the target audience, and also an attentive study of the market environment to support the appropriate level of originality as the basis for effective design solutions.

Saily mascot design process

Advantages of mascots

Let’s see what the important practical advantages of mascots are applied to in branding and content strategy.

Memorability

People tend to remember specific images longer than abstract ones, and human-like characters are the favorites for this technique. No doubt, it can significantly influence brand awareness.

Recognizability

Mascot can become a strong element of an original and unique piece of the content presenting a particular product or service. A well-done analysis of the target audience, as well as a sophisticated and thought-out design, can provide the brand with an important element making it recognizable in seconds. This advantage is also directly connected with the previous one. As long as it is easier to remember the mascot, it is also easier to recognize the product and its features, among others.

Visual marking

Mascot allows marking visually anything connected with the product, creating an additional field for promotional activity. A mascot can work as a logo, transform into illustrations, elements of gamification, printed stickers, and every time, it will support a strong visual connection with a brand.

Personalization

As has already been mentioned, users usually appreciate the element of direct communication and personal attention to them. Mascot is one of the best ways to provide it. It can communicate directly with the speech bubbles, provide visual prompts via various facial expressions, reflect the mood of the user with different graphic variations of the mascot, provide helpful instructions in the tutorial and congratulate the achievements. There are hundreds of ways to strengthen the element of personal communication using mascots. For users, it can make a big difference, especially in cases of interaction: communication with a particular character often provides a much more positive and dynamic user experience than impersonal instruction sent by the system.

Stylistic support

Mascots, being a highly flexible element, can become a central part of the general style concept for the product. It is easy to send the key message to the user via mascot: it won’t take long to understand if the product is serious or entertaining, lively or calm, business-like or easy-breezy, highly private or broadly social, and so on and so forth.

Product voice and tone

In combination with the previous feature, mascots can play a great role in supporting general tone and voice, which is the basis for a branding strategy. Mascot usually reflects the most important feature of the product and transfers the idea much faster and in a user-friendly way. Moreover, it often gives a chance to avoid long copy bulks in product descriptions enabling visual perception of information which is by far faster than text perception.

Onboarding tutorial for Singify

Emotion and interest trigger

Dealing with users, we all should remember that they are unique individuals, with unique inner worlds full of their own emotions. Emotions and feelings are often the main power moving people to a particular choice, decision or operations. Mascot is one of the fastest ways to provide emotional feedback to users, allowing them to speak their language and making the product more user-centered.

Aesthetic satisfaction

Although practical and problem-solving considerations are the primary drivers of user acquisition and retention, aesthetic satisfaction shouldn’t be overlooked. Mascot, as an element of the sophisticated artistic approach, can become the feature supporting this user’s need. A pleasantly looking mascot is a good reason to make a choice in favor of a particular product in the case when it’s compared to the ones with the same functionality but less attractive graphic support.

Long-term strategic potential

Mascots accomplished properly usually become an element of long-term branding strategy and are able to satisfy multiple needs, getting transformed and refreshing the experience of product use without losing recognizability.

Saily mascot design process

Diversity of usage

Mascots can be used in hundreds of ways, across digital graphics and physical products, ranging from simple stickers and illustrations to printed materials, dolls and toys, play characters, and cartoons.

Element of virality

Unique and stylish mascot can become a strong element of virality, becoming so popular among users that they will not only spread it to each other but also create new versions, parodies, discussions, and the like. That works especially well in children’s products when the mascot becomes a central representative of the brand and creates a high level of desirability.

Element of consistency

Mascot applied in various elements of branding and content strategy creates the feeling of consistency, which is the basis of strong brand presence and positioning on the market.

Requirements for mascots

Therefore, based on the points above, we can summarize the requirements for effective mascots. Among them, we would insist that a mascot should be:

• memorable
• recognizable
• original
• representing a consistent character
• flexible to adapt and adjust
• applicable for diverse tasks
• looking good in different sizes and resolutions
• stylistically harmonic
• lively and user-friendly.

Mascots in UI

Mascots are very helpful in interfaces: they liven up the overall process, capture the user’s attention, serve as a memorable element, support a stylistic concept, and create the illusion of direct communication with the user.

Also, wisely used in illustrations featuring actions or interactions, a mascot can become a good way to avoid using too much copy on the screen and, in this way, save space for other important elements of the layout or just more “air” really needed to create a good perception of data on the screen or page.

Saily mascot applied to the mobile app user interface

Certainly, mascots should be used judiciously to avoid overloading the interface where they are not needed. The aim of a mascot in any environment is to simplify and speed up interactions with a product. If this objective is not achieved, the mascot could play a negative role and create unnecessary distractions rather than enhancing the brand. In our next post, we will continue this topic, covering key pitfalls and considerations in creating a mascot as a branding element. Stay tuned!

Useful Articles

Here are several articles to explore the theme of usability and user experience design.

5 Basic Types of Images in Web Design

The Anatomy of a Web Page: Basic Elements

6 Elements of Efficient Company Website Design

UX Practices on Product Page Design

How to Design Effective Search

Web Design: 17 Basic Types of Web Pages

Guide to 6 Effective Types of Web Animation

Directional Cues in User Interfaces

Negative Space in Design: Tips and Best Practices

Error Screens and Messages: UX Design Practices

Originally written for Tubik Blog