MARKETING
How to Design a Character for Your Brand
Have you ever searched stock image websites and thought, None of these truly represent my brand?
It can be difficult to stand out using the same cheesy images as everyone else, but creating a unique brand character can help distance you from the pack.
A brand character, or mascot, is the visual representation and ambassador of your brand. They can be an illustration, inanimate object, a person, animal or any other character of your choosing.
This is different from brand personality, which refers to the emotional and behavior characteristics attributed to your brand that help you resonate with customers.
Below we’ll explore the benefits of using a brand character and how to create your own.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Using a Brand Character
Brand characters can fulfill a variety of uses for your company. Here are some advantages of using them:
- Improve communication: Images can often convey feelings and communicate messages to your audience more quickly and efficiently than words. Some even aim to build an emotional connection with the viewer. It’s a popular strategy for marketing products to children like cereals and toys.
- Brand Recognition: Some characters are so ingrained in popular culture that they become inseparable from the brand, like Ronald McDonald or the M&M Spokescandies. Customers will be able to identify your product or service without the brand ever being mentioned.
- Viral marketing potential: If your brand character is catchy and compelling, there’s a chance it could take off on social media. Take Kroger’s Krojis characters, which spawned several memes and parody videos shortly after their launch.
The original commercial (pictured above) used Flo Rida’s song “Low” to advertise their “Lower Than Low” campaign. Soon people were making their own versions, like this one.
However, using a brand character may not be the best choice for every business. Here are some disadvantages:
- May not be a good fit for your business model: For some products like fitness equipment, makeup, or any product that is aimed at altering the customer’s physical appearance, using a brand character is less effective. Customers will want to see a real person in advertising materials as proof that it works.
- Brand disconnect: While good brand characters can help customers recognize your brand, a bad one can have the opposite effect. The character may be recognizable, but customers have no idea what your company does. In the worst case scenario, the character could be inflammatory, or not age well like the recent rebranding of Aunt Jemima pancake products.
- Could be expensive: If you’re not creating the brand logo in-house, hiring an outside designer or agency can be cost prohibitive, especially if your business is just starting out.
Once you’ve decided having a brand character will be beneficial, you can get started on the fun part — creating your own.
Creating a Brand Character of Your Own
Henneke Duistermaat, writer and creator of Enchanting Marketing, found it easiest to reflect her true brand image, connect with her audience, and make her business memorable by hand-drawing her brand character, Henrietta. Henrietta is a cartoon character who embodies Enchanting Marketing better than any stock photo could.
Take a look at the infographic below, featuring Henneke’s “alter ego” Henrietta, to find inspiration to create drawings for your business that will captivate and engage your audience.
While you may not opt to draw your own character like Henneke, you can adopt some of her thought process when creating your own. Think about:
- What problem are you trying to solve?
- How does that problem make your customers feel?
- What solution do you offer?
- What attributes do you want the character to convey?
- Where will you use this character? On the physical product, website design, or customer service chat box?
Brand Character Examples
Brand characters are not a one-size-fits-all marketing tool. You can choose cartoon characters like Henneke, anthropomorphized animals or objects, or even fictional people. If you’re stumped on where to start, we’ve pulled a variety of brand characters to get your creativity flowing.
1. Flo from Progressive
Flo is a great example of how effective a fictional person can be as a brand character. She’s highly recognizable and always communicates the perks of using Progressive over other insurance companies. Flo has more than 68,000 followers on Twitter, demonstrating the character’s reach beyond traditional commercials.
2. GEICO’s Gecko
Not to be left out, fellow insurance company GEICO’s quirky gecko character also has a following of their own. Is he Australian or British? No one knows for sure, but we do know we can save on car insurance by switching to GEICO because this gecko brand character is incredibly good at what he does. To play up the character’s popularity, GEICO even facilitates Q&As with him via social media, getting the public to engage with the brand in a fun way.
3. Reddit’s Snoo
Reddit’s Snoo alien character can be found throughout its website and even has its own thread. The genderless and colorless alien has come to not only represent the company, but also its target audience: everyone. Reddit appeals to everyone and serves as a forum where users from any background can share news, their hobbies, other types of content, and host discussions on just about any topic. It’s the internet’s hub for “everyday people” (plus aliens of course), and Snoo reflects that.
4. Twitter’s Larry the Bird
It seems fitting that a site named Twitter would choose a bird for its brand character. Larry the Bird was named after basketball great Larry Bird, as co-founder Biz Stone is a Celtics fan. While small, this little blue bird is synonymous with Twitter without having to see the brand name spelled out.
It’s versatile and used on not only website branding, but seamlessly tucked into the corner of every individual’s tweet. It’s ubiquitous but not obtrusive.
Including a Brand Character in Your Marketing Plan
Including a brand character into your marketing materials should be based on both market research and your target audience’s needs. They are meant to enhance the user experience and simplify communication between the brand and its customers.
This article was originally published August 17, 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
MARKETING
YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]
Introduction
With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.
Types of YouTube Ads
Video Ads
- Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
- Types:
- In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
- Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.
Display Ads
- Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
- Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).
Companion Banners
- Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
- Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.
In-feed Ads
- Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.
Masthead Ads
- Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.
YouTube Ad Specs by Type
Skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Action: 15-20 seconds
Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
- Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
Bumper Ads
- Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
- File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 640 x 360px
- Vertical: 480 x 360px
In-feed Ads
- Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Headline/Description:
- Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
- Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line
Display Ads
- Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
- Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
- File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
- File Size: Max 150KB.
- Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
- Logo Specs:
- Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
- File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
- Max Size: 200KB.
Masthead Ads
- Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
- Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
- File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).
Conclusion
YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!
MARKETING
Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists
Amazon pillows.
MARKETING
A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots
Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.
To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.
Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots
Salesforce’s evolving architecture
It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?
“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”
Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”
That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.
“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.
Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”
Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot
“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.
For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”
Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”
It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”
What’s new about Einstein Personalization
Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?
“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”
Finally, trust
One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.
“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”
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