Why Smart Brands use Characters
Our story begins around 10 000 BC. Life was kind of simple. You had to do two important things:
You had to find food and
You had to try not to become food
Other people were important in this for the following reasons:
They saw things you missed
They gave you useful stuff and
They offered you great services like getting eaten instead of you
There was a problem though: not everyone offered the same quality of products and some offered really bad services. Figuring out who you could trust and work with was a big problem
After much deliberation we figured out a really cool formula that involved analysing things such as body language, tone of voice, logic consistency and emotional expression. But it turned out to be very, very complicated. At least, you couldn’t sit and think about these things before deciding to trust someone. It would take to long.
To solve the problem the mind came up with a clever solution: it notified us about the result of all its calculations with a single emotion called Feel Good.
If you had a good feeling about someone you were OK to trust them.
Today you have loads of people who want you to have their products and services.
With all that noise it has become difficult to figure out whom you should trust.
The Question now is: “where is this Feel Good in all this Blah, Blah, Blah”
And that is why smart brands use cartoon characters.
Characters promise you a Feel Good experience that gets the brand through the door
Characters are synonymous with entertainment - Captivating, Refreshing, Resonates, Great Personalities, Fun Stories, Emotional Connection, Engaging, Different, Memorable. These are all part of the feel good formula
Entertainment automatically puts you in a more relaxed mood
And when you’re relaxed you’re more inclined to pay attention to what someone is telling you.
But does the character necessarily imply the product is good?
No, but it says a lot about the people behind the product.
It says that they care about how you feel about them and their products and services. And if they care about how you feel they are going to make sure they look after you. And all things being equal … that’s a pretty important difference.
