How can a mascot improve brand values and visibility?

Interview with Payman Taei, founder of VismeApp

Building a brand from the ground up takes a good dose of perseverance and creativity. It’s not an easy task, by any means. On top of that, cultivating brand values and increasing brand visibility takes willpower and a good team to back you up.

For some extra help in that regard, brands use mascots to represent everything they stand for. Some brands start off with a mascot in their logo or their brand assets. Other brands might take a route similar to Visme’s and bring the mascot to life after being around for a while.

Is there any difference to a mascot that is born with the brand and a mascot that comes to life as the brand grows? Furthermore, can a mascot improve brand values and visibility?

I decided to find out.

Just recently, Visme launched a new updated version of its cloud-based design software. As part of the launch, they brought to life a new mascot.

Visme has been around for 6 years, completely bootstrapped since day one. The Visme brand thrives on being original and non-conforming. With so many online design tools, unicorns, and otherwise, Visme stands out as one of the coolest underdogs.

Their user base grew to 5M users thanks to word of mouth, outreach, PR, and social media efforts. As a platform that helps non-designers create content any way they want, Visme’s mascot couldn’t be any different.

Seeing as how I am part of the Visme team, I quickly got in touch with Payman, the founder. I wanted to ask him some questions about the Visme mascot and how it has performed since its introduction.

Here’s what I found.

Q: Why did you decide to create a mascot for Visme?

A: I believe most brands should have an alternate way of promoting their brand.

Mascots can be a great option, in particular for SaaS products. At the end of the day, they are software for the end-user. That’s why we wanted to somehow bring an emotional aspect to our character. We know that this could be done with an actual human or an animal mascot.

As a design platform, we want to always push boundaries of design and creativity so we chose to utilize a non-human/non-animal mascot. One that would still have emotions and could relay messages at a human level.

Q: Why bring the mascot to life now and not 6 years ago?

A: Back then, we were focused on developing the product. We were a small team and didn’t have the resources or an amazing creative team around to bring it to life. After Visme grew and we hired over 20 members from around the world, we finally felt ready to start getting even more creative with our marketing efforts.

We also had to grow as a brand before we even considered creating a mascot. Instead of depending on a mascot to build our brand, we used our brand as a foundation to create ours. The inception of our mascot started in 2019 and we launched it in 2020. It was a long process, just like how improving our brand visibility was a long process.

I believe that we introduced our mascot at just the right time. We didn’t have to rebrand to add it to our visual assets. In fact, we used our existing logo as a visual foundation for how the mascot looks. In essence, we infused all the years of experience and growth into this character. I think it’s more representative of our brand than any mascot we could have thought up 6 years ago.

Q: Who or what is the Visme mascot?

A: Before creating our mascot we had a look at what other companies like ours used as mascots. We also looked at what other types of companies had too. We noticed that digital companies mostly had robots or AI style mascots while others had some type of animal or anthropomorphic creature.

Our mascot had to be different. Even though we appreciated the cute robots, animals, and chocolates with faces, we knew that our mascot had to be none of those things. While also being all of those things in one fell swoop.

Taking into account what our app does for people, we came to the realization that the Visme mascot should be a sidekick for our users. We envisioned a complement to the everyday creation of visual content.

For us, the human user is the most important aspect of our brand. Therefore our mascot needed to show emotion while also portraying an AI like intelligence. That’s how our non-human, non-robot, non-animal mascot came to be.

Visme is the brand, and our mascot is Visme. They are one and the same. Visme is not a he, nor she, or even it. It’s a SaaS. Just like Visme the app.

Q: What was the design process like?

A: Thanks to the creative team I put together in the last six years, it was a lot of fun. But it did take a long time to complete. I worked with an illustrator, a 3D modeler, and an animator for six straight months.

I didn’t do the brainstorming all on my own. I had many conversations with Monfa, the illustrator, to find the creative foundations for the mascot. Together we came up with the realizations that I mentioned above.

Once we had all that, Monfa got to work and started sketching. Much of the inspiration came from childhood memories of fantastical robots in Ghibli movies and other Japanese anime. Robot characters like Mazinger Z and even Beymax from the more modern Big Hero Six movie. All these were robots with human quality to them. This was interesting to us as an important characteristic. The design process started there.

I wrote an article about the complete design process if you want to know more. I tell the full story of how it all progressed from draft to draft until the final explainer video where we presented the mascot.

Q: Why did you decide to present the mascot in a video? Instead of in a logo, for example?

A: The mascot isn’t in our logo, but our logo is part of the mascot. We didn’t rebrand or add the mascot to our logo because we weren’t changing anything about our brand. We were solidifying our values and ideals into a character. It needed to have its own personality and its own characteristics.

We decided to animate the character in a video instead of just creating an illustration of the mascot because we wanted to bring it to life. If it was a static illustration, it wouldn’t necessarily feel alive. In a video, it was easier to show more of what the mascot and our brand are all about. Giving it a voice was a huge step towards establishing the character as its own entity. The video was essential towards showing that the character IS the brand and the brand IS the character.

Q: Since you launched the mascot video, have you seen any difference in brand awareness and visibility?

A: We use the mascot in specific targeting. We have a product explainer video, and we have our brand video with the mascot. Each has its own place in our marketing depending if we are doing product awareness or brand awareness.

Overall we have been able to reach an above the funnel awareness with audiences that wouldn’t normally engage as well with a product explainer video. I think this in itself is a great success. A product explainer video that shows how a product works is a proven marketing factor but some users don’t react positively to them.

We created the mascot and the video for it for those people. The ones that think a bit out of the box, like the team at Visme does.

Q: How are your users reacting to the mascot?

A: The overall general sense has been very positive. If I was to select the most common keywords provided by users, they have been “so cool,” “this is pretty neat,” “wow,” “amazing,” “nice approach.” And since the concept of our mascot is different from the norm, it has also on a small scale caused some to ask, “so is it a he or she?” And in some cases, “why a robot?”

I believe all of these are intentions we wanted to get from the mascot. We didn’t intend for everyone to just “get it” but to make them “wonder” and remember our brand on a different note. As something that stood out against the noise and wasn’t boring or standard.

Q: What’s in store for the mascot in the future?

A: We have some neat poses and short clips of it planned. As much as we love the mascot, we don’t want the mascot to overtake the logo/brand itself. It’s a supporting factor, not the main aspect. That’s why the mascot has its own place in our marketing. Along with many other projects that represent and promote our brand.

Right now, for example, the mascot makes an appearance in our new about page. It sits upon its fluffy cloud surrounded by lots more creative Visme characters and assets.

Even though we consider that the mascot is the brand and the brand is the mascot, Visme can’t be boxed into one visual representation. That’s also why you don’t see the mascot all over our website and brand assets. We consider it part of the family, not the omnipresent characterization.

Thanks, Payman for telling us about the story behind Visme the mascot!

From this interview with Payman, we can see how a mascot can be used to improve brand values and visibility. But exactly how much still remains to be seen. The Visme mascot was just released in February of 2020. As more content is released with the mascot in it, it’ll be interesting to see how it keeps improving Visme’s brand visibility.

For now, let’s enjoy the awesome video presenting the new mascot. Share it with your friends!