When Do Brand Characters Succeed?

Brand characters are designed to strengthen your marketing. Your product won't even notice their impact.

A strong brand character can be the key to customer retention, bringing them back years later simply because they remembered a two-legged dolphin, a smiling banana, or something else entirely. These imprints make competitors easier to forget, while your brand is still enduring and searchable even if years passed since you last saw it.

Interestingly, it’s as likely for our mind to be able to capture a moment as it is possible to retain a memory over prolonged period of time.

In crowded markets, brand characters work by leveraging memory, creating a lasting impression amidst the noise, which makes them particularly effective for cyclical products, where brand recall over time is crucial.

But brand characters also excel in environments where the time to capture attention is minimal, such as conferences or ad spots. In these brief moments, the ability of a brand character to make an immediate impact is invaluable.

So if you are in a crowded industry prone to economic cycles like finances, consumer goods, travel or fashion and you want to stay afloat years from now, what should you focus on to make sure your investment in designing a character pays off? Focus on making it hard to forget. Bizarre combinations, puns and humor work best for triggering recall making your brand unforgettable.