The mascot renaissance is coming to advertising
Are mascots on the flip side of the 'wheel of cool'? Dave Jansen, CCO and founding partner at Connecting Plots, discusses the pending mascot renaissance, which will only accelerate with artificial intelligence.
When I think of mascots, a few images immediately pop into my head. A clown. A peanut with a monocle. A southern colonel with a questionable accent. And of course those poor sods suffocating inside oversized foam suits, sweating buckets at sporting events while pretending to enjoy their miserable fate.
Mascots were once the bread and butter of advertising. Living, breathing (sometimes horrifying) symbols that lodged themselves deep into our collective consciousness. They weren’t just marketing tools; they were cultural icons. A shortcut to brand recognition that worked across TV, print, packaging, hell, even skywriting if you really wanted.
So, what happened?
Like most things, mascots fell victim to the ever-turning Wheel of Cool.
If you’re not familiar with the Wheel of Cool, let me break it down for you. What’s cool eventually becomes not cool, only to boomerang back into coolness years later. Kind of like cargo pants…. and your parents.
The Hamburgler, Ronald McDonald, Grimace, Birdie.
As the new generation took the reins of marketing culture, the perception of ‘cool’ shifted.
Through the lens of subjectivity (not what works), Mascots suddenly felt childish and outdated, relics of an ad era that seemed too scripted, too corporate, not meaningful enough.
The death knell? I think it might have been the woke era. As it took hold, it put fear into the thought of advertising purely for entertainment.
Suddenly brands needed a purpose. Brands became earnest, serious and what followed was a wave of minimalist rebrands and bland bullshit that stripped away every ounce of personality that made brands unique and likeable. It left us with the wasteland of sterile, functional, homogenised clutter, boring people to death.
But here’s the thing: mascots were never supposed to be cool. That was never the point. They were supposed to be memorable, to take up real estate in your brain and squat there rent-free for eternity.
And if the Wheel of Cool tells us anything, it’s what falls out of favour always finds its way back. Enter the mascot renaissance.
If you haven’t seen the ‘Are mascots making a comeback’ documentary it’s well worth a watch. It’s by brand strategist and self-confessed mascot tragic, Stef Hamerlinck who goes into the rise, fall, and unexpected comeback of brand mascots.
Some brands are starting to get it.
Bar BQ Plaza, a popular barbeque restaurant chain in Thailand, has 37 years of history with an iconic fish ball mascot, ‘Kama-Chan’. To combat a dip in sales they made the fish ball into a sad-faced version, which leveraged the mascot’s popularity and resulted in people flocking back to the stores.
But it’s not just about resurrecting the old mascots. It’s about building new ones and more importantly, sticking with them. Branding, at its core, is about consistency, and if a character is given time to cement itself into a brand’s DNA, it stops being ‘just marketing’ and starts becoming part of culture.
Snap, Crackle, and Pop
As we barrel into the generative AI era, creating mascots is about to become effortless. We’re talking about limitless possibilities. Hyper-realistic animations, interactive avatars, AI-driven brand personalities that evolve over time.
But here’s the catch, a mascot is more than just an image. Mascots have depth. They have stories, quirks and unique little traits that make them feel real.
AI avatars are set to be the next big thing. With many people predicting that in under 10 years there will be more artificial influencers than real ones – all trying to scale influence and monetise their platforms. IP powerhouses like Disney and Warner Bros will scale their characters and content on a scale we can’t yet imagine.
The best mascots aren’t just created, they are cultivated. And if brands have the guts to lean into them, rather than chase fleeting trends, they might just unlock the secret sauce to something modern marketing desperately lacks: staying power.
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