If you grew up in the 90s, your childhood was probably shaped by brand mascots.
From Tony the Tiger to Micky Mouse, Honey Monster to Churchill Dog, we’ve all got our favourite old-school mascots - looking at you, Mr Blobby.
And now, brands are rediscovering their love of these anthropomorphic heroes, one chaotic character at a time (we’re all still big kids at heart, really).
Studies have shown that character-based campaigns boost market share by an impressive 41%, compared to 29.7% for non-character campaigns.
Leading us to believe that it’s a no-brainer: your brand should probably have a mascot.
Or, should it? (TL;DR: it depends.)
In this post, we’ll :
Plus, we’ve spoken to the mascot-guru himself, Stef Hamerlinck, for his thoughts and feelings on whether your brand should consider having a mascot, too. Check out his studio if you’re interested in creating your own mascot!
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Brand mascots can be powerful allies in building emotional connections, boosting recognition, and bringing personality to your marketing.
But they’re not a magic fix.
The most successful mascots are rooted in strong brand identity, resonate with the right audience, and are used consistently across touchpoints. Done well, a mascot becomes a storyteller, a memory trigger, and the friendly face your customers love.
A brand mascot is the heart and soul of a brand. It’s the personification of what your brand stands for - an ambassador for all you do.
It’s ultimately the bridge between the brand and its audience, one that they can interact, and build a bond, with.
The word ‘mascot’, according to the Oxford Dictionary, originates from the French word ‘mascotte’, meaning ‘mascot’ or ‘charm’, in the late 19th century.
However, the word also has an earlier meaning, linked to the Provençal word “mascoto”, which means bewitchment, enchantment, or witch.
The thought behind this is that a mascot is seen as a lucky charm, or talisman, to protect from evil spells.
Mascots are everywhere throughout history, from the figureheads carved into the bows of ships to the sculptures that guard temples and shrines. We even still wear them today as lucky charms, or faith-based protectors (St. Christopher medallions for travellers, etc.).
The oldest continuous mascot in the world is considered to be ‘Larry’, the mascot of Quaker Oats. Created in 1877, he’s remained largely unchanged, representing purity, honesty, and integrity - just what you want from your porridge provider.
Your logo is your signature. Your mascot is your spokesperson.
A logo is the visual symbol that people recognise as you at a glance. Used across your website, packaging and merch, it helps to build consistency and recognition.
A brand mascot, on the other hand, adds personality. Mascots bring movement, humour, and storytelling to your marketing, helping your brand feel more human and memorable.
Logos build recognition, but mascots build relationships.
They may be cute and cuddly (most of the time), but why are brands that don’t give cuddly vibes all of a sudden getting cutesy with us?
Mascots are rearing their fluffy animated heads once more with a resurgence across B2B and B2C, and it all comes down to ROE - or, Return on Emotion. This has been guiding brands to start ditching the corporate mask of businessbusinessbusiness in favour of genuine emotional connections with their audience (finally).
Discount codes could never.
Return on Emotion is all about turning every activation into an unforgettable, brand-defining moment fueled by emotional connections and reactions.
64% of consumers are more likely to remain loyal to a brand with which they feel an emotional connection, and ads with puppets or animated characters are +25% more emotional on average.
Plus, with 95% of purchase decisions driven by emotion, brands are harnessing these insights to build meaningful connections that inspire loyalty and engagement through emotional bonds.
Aww - grab the tissues.
You can read more about Return on Emotion over at Brand Revolution.
If your brand has a mascot, it’s already 6-15x more memorable than brands that don’t have one - that can make a big difference when it comes to the consumer choosing between two competitor brands.
This happens because characters trigger memory structures that abstract symbols or typography simply can’t match.
You know what they say, ‘familiarity is only a few letters different from family’ - they say that, right?
Here’s what Stef has to say:
“Familiarity breeds trust. Research from Ipsos (The Power of You) shows that characters are one of the most memorable assets versus logos, fonts, and colours. You recognise something, it feels safe, you're more likely to engage, especially when it has a face and a voice. In a moment where AI-generated slop is everywhere, and people are increasingly sceptical of what they're looking at, a well-built character gives you something consistent to hold onto. It's an anchor, even if that character is powered by generative AI.”
Because of the flexibility that mascots offer brands, some have some pretty crazy personalities.
Having a mascot automatically makes it easier for brands to show their authentic selves, as they’re free (within the realms of the brand) to do what they want.
They can cry, they can laugh, they can have ongoing online feuds with competitors across socials, they can make ‘mistakes’, and they can even die.
Mascots give brands the creative freedom to show a little more personality than they would have originally, endearing the brand to its audience.
They’ve got pizzazz and sass (like my cat).
Ami Werner, Head of Strategy at Bulletproof
All successful mascots play on our love of nostalgia.
Nostalgia is a powerful marketing strategy that’s being adapted across multiple campaigns with outstanding results - because, as humans, we love to reminisce.
And with 68% of Gen Z responding positively to nostalgia marketing, and 61% of millennials saying nostalgia improves their brand perception, what better way to throwback to the good ol’days than with a lovable character?
That’s why brand mascots aren’t going anywhere anytime soon - because nostalgia marketing has such positive results with new audiences.
It’s comfort. It’s familiar. It’s dopamine-inducing safety.
So, get ready for brands to bring back characters they once retired, companies to discover mascots in their marketing suite they never knew were there, and others to try to re-create brand-new mascots with nostalgic callbacks.
Because, to nostalgia is to human, and to human is to build emotional connections to inanimate objects.
Mascots are a BIG thing in Japan - quite literally. Every train station, town, business, and prefecture has its own mascot, and it’s as awesome as it is terrifying (especially if they jumpscare you on the subway platform).
Mascots are super popular in Japan because the Shinto religion dictates that everything has a ‘kami’, or spirit - including inanimate objects. This means that it’s not so far-fetched in Japan to have an array of weird and wonderful puppets and characters with personalities wandering the streets, because, in their culture, every rock is ‘alive’ anyway.
Some of the most famous mascots come from Japan, such as Hello Kitty, Doraemon, and Kumamon.
They’ve become so popular because, during the Japanese recession in the 1990s, they were an easy, cost-effective way to make a brand more relatable and memorable by building an emotional connection.
Read more: 5 Japanese merchandise trends transforming promotional branding
And no, we don’t mean different animals or anthropomorphic spoons - when we’re talking about different types of mascots, we mean the brand mascots for:
To create the best brand mascot, you need to first do your best Frankenstein impression - because you’ll be stitching, glueing, and cobbling alllll the different aspects of your brand together to make a mascot that’s unique, memorable, and emotionally resonant.
If your brand were a person, who would they be?
Sporty? Quirky? Goofy? Grumpy?
Figure out your brand’s personality, and you’ll be on your way to working out what/who your brand mascot is.
Your target audience will resonate with different icons. Figure out how they see your brand, and what your brand identity is through their eyes, and then you’ll be able to determine if they’d respond best to a sassy sunflower or a corporate squirrel.
Image source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/rogermosey/2010/05/london_2012_mascots_an_update.html
Next, decide what your mascot will physically look like.
Will it be a human, an animal, or an object?
A cartoon, realistic, or abstract?
Will they incorporate nods towards your already established company logo, or be completely separate?
This is often the hardest part of creating a brand mascot, as making a design that’s both unique and cohesive can be a challenge (but a LOT of fun).
Once you’ve decided what your mascot will look like and their personality traits, you’ll need to work out what their narrative is - what’s their backstory?
Remember, a mascot’s primary task is to be your brand’s protagonist.
The beautiful thing about mascots is their versatility.
They can be printed on packaging, animated in commercials, or even printed on promotional merchandise, but keeping this cohesive whilst still using your mascot to its full potential can be a fine line to balance - so ensure you have user guidelines in place before launching.
If you’re still on the fence about whether or not your brand needs a mascot, here are four key reasons why we think mascots are excellent additions to your marketing toolkit:
They don’t need contracts; they don’t need time off. They can be scaled infinitely for multiple uses, and they’ll never get arrested (hopefully). Mascots help keep your brand consistent, whilst still being flexible.
From plushies to keyrings and badges, to mugs, towels and toys, mascots live and breathe merchandise opportunities like no other marketing asset - it’s been shown that brands with mascots are 30% more likely to get attention for campaigns.
Interested in turning your mascot into merch? Get in touch, and we’d be happy to help.
Research shows that companies using mascots experience a 24% higher level of consumer engagement compared to those that don’t.
But only when they’re a natural fit, according to Stef:
“They work when they feel like they actually belong on the platform. That's the thing most brands miss. IKEA's recent “Tiny Chef” moment is a good example: the voice design, the song selection, and the personality were all tuned for how social actually works. When it clicks, it really clicks. When it doesn't, when it's clearly a boardroom decision dressed up as a character, audiences smell it immediately.”
Brand equity is the value a brand holds in the mind of its customers. If your brand has a strong brand equity, it’s easily recognisable and memorable, giving the brand a competitive advantage. Mascots help to strengthen brand equity as they make you stand out from competitors.
That being said, sometimes, mascots aren’t the answer to your marketing woes. And when mascots are used to cover the cracks of bad branding or poor campaigns, it shows. Here are four times when brands shouldn’t have mascots:
Or worse, they take away what credibility your brand has.
Your mascot needs to make sense to your audience for it to have an impact on your brand. If it doesn’t make sense to your brand, it won’t work.
The winning factor of popular mascots is that they’re unique and memorable. If they look like any old mascot, they aren’t doing their job right.
Not everyone is going to love your mascot, but make sure the majority do, otherwise they’ll be hindering, not helping, your brand.
In the old brand guidelines of hundreds of brands, brand mascots lay abandoned and forgotten, dusty in some file on a computer somewhere, because they didn’t work out.
But, it isn’t down to the mascot as to why this happens: it’s because the brand didn’t know how to use them correctly.
Brand mascots have to be used strategically, otherwise their impact will be limited.
“A mascot built on a shallow brief will flop just as hard online as anywhere else. The brands that get it right treat the character as actual IP, with a personality, a point of view, a world. Not just a logo with eyes.”
From death-defying app icons to angry green birds, here are five iconic brand mascots you can learn from:
Did you ever think we’d live in a world where the mascot of a language-learning app would become a TikTok sensation?
Yeah, me neither.
But Duo (Duolingo’s mascot) has become THE chaotic influencer in his own right.
From faking his own dramatic death to threatening you to complete your streak, his humour and playfulness have made him an online sensation - leading to a 40% year-on-year jump in paid subscribers for Duolingo.
Brand takeaway: Your mascot doesn’t have to be nice - because sassy is lovable.
We love Hingie, Hinge’s anthropomorphised app icon; they try to kill with every successful match.
Throughout Hinge’s various marketing campaigns, Hingie meets increasingly unhinged endings whenever someone finds love or has a ‘green flag’ moment.
He’s impaled. Set alight. Smashed with a hammer…the list goes on. But each time, Hingie happily sacrifices himself, because, as Hinge’s president and CMO Jackie Jantos states, “[he] lives to die”.
Brand takeaway: Visual storytelling that creates an emotional hook with your audience is a powerful marketing tactic that works really well with a lovable mascot at its centre.
Read more: Why I love Hinge as a happily married marketer
If you’re looking for a mascot with a backstory, look no further than Aleksandr Orlov.
Isn’t it crazy that a simple typo led to one of the most iconic mascots in brand history? Compare the Market’s ‘Compare the Meerkat’ campaign is pure brand-building gold - with longevity and emotional resonance.
So much so that Aleksandr Orlov has now written a book, has an entire merch line, and even has an expanded universe.
Brand takeaway: Never underestimate the power of lore.
Yichan Wang, The Branding Journal
The highlight of the school day - getting Microsoft Word open and saying hi to Clippy.
One of the friendliest, most helpful, and memorable brand mascots out there.
Brand takeaway: When your mascot has a purpose interacting with your audience, its memorability and ability to emotionally connect skyrocket.
He’s round. He’s green. He’s a robot bug.
Bugdropid is Android’s mascot with a merchandise empire.
His official name is “The Bot”, and he was created in 2007.
Recently, he’s had a 3-D makeover, adding a lot more character.
Brand takeaway: Even if you’ve had a mascot for decades, a little revamp won’t hurt anyone.
Recently, Penguin Random House released (literally) its iconic penguin mascot from its oval. Now, they have a gaggle of illustrations full of character and playful fun.
Originally created in 1935, designed after the penguins in London Zoo, they’ve since become the iconic symbol of superb literature. However, they’ve forever been stuck inside a tiny oval.
Until now.
The penguin has finally been freed to be the mascot it’s always dreamed of being - and not just a logo.
Brand takeaway: Your strongest brand asset might have been lurking in your branding for nearly a century - have a look there first before thinking of anything new.
The biggest news in the mascot world recently - ‘Lil’ Finder Guy.
Apple’s TikTok is now dedicated to this ‘lil guy after he went viral during a livestream.
And, again, it’s not a new mascot - Apple just gave their decades-old Finder app a body, and a cute character.
And they’ve really invested in this guy, with their full TikTok feed now dedicated to his adorable image.
Brand takeaway: Your mascot doesn’t need a big song and dance release - tease your audience with a hint, and then let them lead the surge in excitement and anticipation - then, it’s like they were always a part of your brand.
For its 25th anniversary, Wikipedia released its very own Baby Globe mascot for a limited time only. Isn’t he adorable?!
Originally designed by Jonathan Ferreira, the aim of Baby Globe was to get more involved with the Wikimedia community. However, you can still order Baby Globe plushies! BRB just adopting a Baby Globe.
Brand takeaway: Your mascot doesn't have to be around for a long time to make an impact. Making it a seasonal surprise will make your audience love it even more - because it won’t be around forever.
If, like us, your social feeds are just full of AI ads, Chat-GPT captions, and articles that a human most definitely, 100% didn’t write - you’re probably feeling a tad digitally burnt out.
It’s this boredom of AI slop that’s making us crave actual connections, even from the brands we love to buy.
And, because of this, brands are no longer just inanimate concepts. They have to entertain. They have to grab our brain-rot attention spans. They have to build an emotional connection with us like never before.
Knock, knock - it’s your favourite brand mascot calling to do all three and more.
That’s why brand mascots have happily jumped back into the limelight: because scrolling is more fun with friends.
We asked Stef why he believed mascots were making a comeback:
“Duolingo basically rewrote the playbook for modern mascots. Their owl isn't just a mascot, it's a content engine. They've built one of the most engaged brand accounts on TikTok around a single unhinged character, and other brands noticed. At the same time, generative AI dramatically lowered the production barriers. You no longer need a 3D studio or an illustrator to bring a character to life consistently. That opens the door for smaller brands that would've never considered it before.
“System1 and TikTok have both published data showing that the most effective ads are the ones that make people feel something, ideally laugh. Brands have spent years optimising for targeting and performance while quietly killing their own creativity. Characters are one of the fastest ways to fix that. They're inherently entertaining, they give you something to write jokes around, and they translate naturally to the formats that actually get watched.
“And then there's the cultural tailwind from Asia, where character culture never went away. Think Sanrio, Labubu, K-pop, the whole IP-as-lifestyle ecosystem. That's been bleeding into Western markets for a while. You also see media companies leaning harder into existing character IP like Sonic and Mario, partly because the hard work of building cultural affection is already done.”
The mascots of the future will be completely personalised to the consumer.
Think chat bots, customer service, first point of contact that’s tailored specifically to that unique user’s needs.
They’ll mimic their personality, with their historical brand data just a question away.
Your mascot will become adaptive to cultures, languages and time zones, bringing brands to a global audience for worldwide recognition.
Brand mascots won’t be brand property anymore; they’ll be whatever your audience wants them to be.
– Jolyon Varley
A brand mascot is a character that represents a brand’s personality, values, and identity, helping to create memorable and emotional connections with audiences.
Brands are focusing more on emotional engagement and storytelling, and mascots provide a recognisable, human-like way to stand out in crowded digital spaces.
Not necessarily. Mascots work best when they align with brand identity, resonate with the audience, and have a clear strategic purpose.
Memorable design, a strong personality, and a clear role within the brand’s storytelling all contribute to long-term mascot success.
Yes. Mascots can simplify complex messaging, support internal communications, and make professional brands feel more approachable.
Carefully. Successful launches often involve storytelling, gradual introduction, and clear usage guidelines to ensure consistency across platforms.
Brand mascots are like sugar.
In small doses, they’re sweet, adorable, and lovable. In the right recipes, delicious.
But adding too much sugar becomes sickly, and your dentist hates you.
So, yes, your brand would probably benefit from having a brand mascot, but within reason.
Because not all brand audiences want mascots. If a mascot won’t resonate with your consumers, then they’ll be a waste of time and resources - and it might actually end up harming your relationship with your audience.
So - before you put down a deposit on that fluffy pink cow suit, maybe figure out if a mascot is something your audience will love, or hate, first.
And then you’ll know if your brand should have a mascot.
And you’ll save yourself some embarrassing Vinted returns.
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P.s. A big thanks to Stef Hamerlinck for his help on this post! Don’t forget to check out his studio if you’re interested in creating a brand mascot of your own.