By Peter Getman

Brand Characters are proven successful in becoming the voice of the brand. The Jolly Green Giant, Aflac Duck, Geico Gecko, Michelin Man and Tony the Tiger are several successful examples. Leading with a brand character as the primary medium to deliver the brand’s message pillars requires the character’s personality and the manifestation of this personality to be as defined and focused as the brand position itself.

In my 22 years of branding at MicroArts, we’ve launched a few brand characters that became brand phenoms such as “Doc” for Xerox (he is very successful and prominent in their OCR product line). Doc (short for Document) and his girlfriend “Page” have one job and one job only…to demonstrate the new features to be launched in the OCR product line, which of course would be the 3 primary why-to-buy statements behind upgrading your OCR technologies.

Then we launched Zac, the caped-super mouse for the wildly successful Zac Catalog. Zac too is laser focused in his purpose and personality. He tells you about each product with no marketing speak, no BS, Zac tells it like it is, everything good about the product and everything not so good. His opinion is trusted by millions of consumers. Zac was acquired by one of the big publishers and went multi-lingual. I think he was sold for around $30 million or so, not bad for 4 years work. I miss Zac he is a cool dude. His original owner is a great guy too, wherever in the Caribbean Scottie might be. I digress…more on brand characters.

We are crafting a new brand character for a great brand that is well on its way to becoming a household name iconic for being the undisputed best in its product category. This is an exciting time for our agency, which prompted me to write this down and once again totally immerse my mind’s eye into the creation of a brand character. Let’s start at the beginning…

A brand character has forever represented many household brand names in the form of an endless success story. In many well-known cases, the brand character was introduced at the inception of the brand. I suspect, in most successful executions, the brand character had to plan their “life” within the brand. Once we cement our to-market strategy for the brand character, we can then detail the action plan and bring her/him to life.

To set the stage, let’s take a look at the world of brand character strategies around us.

In some cases brand characters symbolize the creator of the brand (Johnny Walker, Sara Lee, even our neighbors at Lindt, leverage a Mr. Lindt character in Europe). In other cases, the character symbol and personality exudes the brand’s direct differentiating benefit and qualities like Snuggles Bear, Mr. Clean and the Michelin Man (who is puffy to feel like a cushion of safety and exclusively talks about the safety benefits of their tires). Then, some strategies are focused exclusively at the emotional connection between the brand and target demographic. A good example here is Tony the Tiger (They’re Greaaaaat!), he wants you to “eat” great but more importantly he is the “feel” great, “go get ‘em Tiger!” which is why you should “Start your day with Tony.” Finally, some characters are stuck in the middle of these strategies as opposed to picking and sticking to one in order to own it. I won’t slam those brands, at the moment they are already hurting enough.

I find in most successful character strategies [massive media spends aside], there is one, sometimes two target demographics to appeal to. We’ve launched a Monster Maker brand character that speaks to Moms’/ Parents’ sensibilities while still enticing and appealing to children. Easy enough. We recently inherited a brand character that had to appeal to every demographic, Moms, College Types, Seniors, Execs, Org-types, Teenagers, Teachers, Researchers and Greenies (just to name a few, there are many more). Who set this strategy? I call this the hot dog strategy…it has so much stuff in it that it becomes bland, like a hot dog, so the agency starts tossing relish, onions, mustard on it to try to make it appealing. Our challenge, creating a brand character appealing to all, could get generic and unfocused due to an over-extended purpose. These brand characters die. And this was ultimately our recommendation to this client.

In most strategies the brand character speaks volumes for public perception of the parent brand’s identity, in these examples characters were chosen in fact as brand portraits. They represent the brand’s traits and features in the etymological sense by delivering the brand name’s origin or word history.

In this brand character’s case, I believe the character is not the brand, but rather the manner in which the parent brand voices its own characteristics…its “brand pillars” if we want to use fancy pants speak. To offer an analogy using a human brand character, Michael Jordon is not the Nike brand, however, having offered his face, abilities and attitude, he demonstrates the manner Nike [origin: Goddess of Victory] can be perceived at a given period of time in the brand’s history. Our new brand character will speak volumes about the brand personality and the relationship it builds with the public. For example, Ronald McDonald is patient and happy, he is the kindly uncle with whom one learns and plays…and eats. Our character must, like Ronald, maintain a consistent message and focus through time. Once the message is widely known, it can expand because “people” grow, but not change. For example: the Ronald McDonald House is an example of a character’s personality expansion.

So I ask our team, who is this brand character? How do you guys want to define this brand character? We have some of this nailed, but there are still empty buckets that need filling.

What is its name?

Is it male? Female? Can you tell?

What is its purpose?

Where does it live, not live? Will this change over time?

What is its personality traits (no more than 6)?

Show me a drawing of this iconic ally depicting these 6 personality traits

Now, plan the character’s life. Walk me though 5 life situations this character will depict…make sure these dovetail with the parent brand’s messaging pillars.

More on this soon…back to work.