Major Mistakes in Creating a Digital Mascot

- This article is for business owners, marketers, and brand strategists who are considering the creation of a corporate mascot.

Situation

During a meeting, you hear the boss say, "Hmm, we could create a company mascot, it's trendy now, isn't it?" The graphic designer responds, "Well, we need to think this through a bit more. What should it look like?" The boss says, "I don't know, generate a few designs using AI. It's not that hard, right?" The team looks at each other and says, "Sure, let's do it." A week later, they come back with an AI-generated design, and the boss says, "Nice, but this is not what I wanted at all. Can't you come up with a mascot?" ...

You might have seen this situation in your company or maybe not. Today, we will look at what could be wrong in this scenario.

Main Mistakes in Considering a Mascot!

We primarily deal with these issues with clients, and from experience, we know that this approach doesn't work. However, they often recur in reality.

Let's get straight to the point...

1. Mistake: Not Knowing What You Want

Not knowing which mascot would be suitable is not necessarily a problem; we can help with that. However, if you don't know what it should look like and expect the designer to come up with it without giving them more specifics, it's like ordering a cake and getting a brick - somewhere along the line, the order got mixed up. The result is that neither makes sense, and you don't understand why it happened.

If you give a random and vague request to a designer or AI, such as "Make me an interesting mascot that grabs attention," don't be surprised if, in the first instance (yes, with humans, not AI), you get puzzled looks from your designers. In the second instance, you'll get a result that is completely off from what you wanted.

Knowing which mascot to create is not primarily a question for the designer or AI. Knowing which mascot to create means understanding what the mascot represents, what it's good for, and why it should be used. From there, you'll derive what it could be. It is primarily a strategic and marketing question. Only then can you proceed to production.

A mascot must meet certain criteria and cannot be created randomly. One of the many important things that need to be specified is which target audience the mascot will address. But how do you do that? There is a process for identifying other important points that the mascot must meet, thereby finding the right design for the mascot, and we are happy to help you with it.

2. Mistake: Not Thinking Broadly About the Mascot

As mentioned in our previous articles, a mascot is essentially a symbol of your company/brand/product. Customers will recognize and identify you in the market by it. This will make you stand out from your competition, leading to increased sales, etc. When you think about it, a mascot cannot be just a one-time shot in the dark. Its significance and use must be well thought out.

Most people understand this basic purpose of a mascot, but what is often forgotten is that a mascot must fulfill a deeper purpose. It's good to specify this. Having a mascot just because your competition has one is not a good reason; on the contrary.

Why do you want a mascot? This is a question you must ask yourself. You must strategically identify whether a mascot fits your activities and market and whether it makes sense. You need to thoroughly explore your market and target group. There are areas where a mascot is not suitable at all.

3. Mistake: Not Having a Plan for the Mascot's Future

Do you want a mascot just for some campaign or just on a whim, to try it because your competition does it too, and you think it's trendy? You create it, test a few ads, find out it doesn't work well, and decide the mascot doesn't work and scrap it. You start creating a different type of ad, change strategy, and so on. You've just thrown away hundreds of thousands out the window.

We must point out that the strength of a mascot grows with its long-term use. It is very rare for a single campaign with a mascot to work. It's possible, but you need to know exactly what you're doing. The reality is that you need to build your audience's familiarity with the mascot long-term and intelligently. A mascot is, in fact, a long-term investment that may start paying off years later.

A mascot must live and be seen everywhere. It must evolve, for example, in the form of stories (whether static or animated). You simply have to use it. This increases its power, and if you don't do this, you've wasted money on creating a mascot. Therefore, we highly recommend thinking about the mascot in terms of years and planning your marketing strategy at least for the next year.

4. Mistake: Creating a Mascot with AI in a Few Seconds

Yes, AI is developing very quickly, and you can create interesting characters, avatars, mascots that might fit into your strategy, but AI is usually used at the beginning of creation and actually determines about 5% of the work on creating a mascot if you want an original creation for your brand.

If you want to be average and risk that someone on the other side of the planet generates a similar character, then AI is enough for you. But who has an ownership of the character afterall?

We use AI for initial concepts and finding a visual style, but that's where it ends because there's nothing else to do with it at present time.

AI is a good servant but a bad master. It comes with these problems:

• After several attempts, you generate a nice mascot that you like, but you want to put it in a different position, and suddenly it doesn't work. AI struggles with consistency. It produces some weird hybrid that's unusable. It works, but you need to know how to do it.
• Similarly, with animating your mascot in a nice animation, you'll struggle a lot because consistency in movement is very hard for AI. It might get resolved over time, but no one knows when.
• You generate a nice character you like, but nothing guarantees that someone else won't generate something similar. Don't you want to differentiate yourself with your mascot? Don't you want an original mascot that no one else has? Then AI might not be the way to go.
• Legally, AI does not create copyrighted work because only a human can create copyrighted work. So you don't actually have copyright on this mascot. See the previous point, and someone else can generate it too, and God forbid, the AI application you used for training the model, used works with copyright. You could be in trouble without knowing when this bubble will burst and turn against you.
• In reality, you don't have 100% control over generation. The mascot won't make exactly the pose, movement, or expression you need. This is still very difficult to achieve, almost impossible. Some successful animations look good, but how much of it did AI do exactly as you had in mind? That's the question.

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Summary

We hope this article was beneficial to you and helps you avoid the same mistakes we've seen so many times on the experience of mascot creation. Don't underestimate them.

If you need to discuss the creation of your mascot individually, don't hesitate to contact us. We have been working with company mascots since 2015 and have precise procedures on how to:

• Identify which mascot suits you best and create an original design.
• Create or advise on the marketing strategy for the mascot.
• Clarify all necessary steps in the creation process.
• When we create the mascot, you oversee our work and approve each step.
• Create a costume in the likeness of your mascot, suitable for various events.
• Produce a desk mini statue of your mascot using 3D printing.
• If necessary, arrange for the production of merchandise items featuring the mascot.

Price of a Digital Mascot

If you are interested in the basic price range for creating a digital mascot, write to us at info@leaf-animation.cz. We will send you the price list for free.

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