Mascots are dead. Long live the mascot
British Gas’ decision to retire Wilbur the penguin as a cornerstone of its marketing reawakens the question about the effectiveness of brand mascots, writes Nir Wegrzyn
Wilbur the penguin will be in good company in the retirement home: Confused.com’s Brian the Robot, Tetley’s Tetley Tea Folk and the Fire Service’s Fireman Sam have also recently moved in.
In the US, there was also a huge Twitter storm at the passing of Mr Peanut, the mascot of US snack food company Planters.
Back in the 1950s and 60s, brand mascots were in their pomp – think McDonald’s Ronald McDonald and Frosties’ Tony the Tiger – at a time when the media landscape was less complicated, spanning just TV, radio and print.
Today, in a much more complicated media space, mascots have started to feel a bit out-of-date, maybe even passé – a relic from a by-gone era.
It’s hard, however, to argue with their continued effectiveness – even if that effectiveness is restricted to the medium of TV.
The durability of GoCompare.com’s Gio Compario and Comparethemarket.com’s meerkats – not to forget a recent return of Peperami’s Animal mascot – suggest there is still life in the format.
The reason for retiring Wilbur after five years, according to British Gas marketing director Jill Dougan, was shifting to become “a more modern, relevant, British brand”.
“When your boiler breaks down you don’t need a penguin, you need one of our engineers,” said Dougan.
“Wilbur has been fantastic for the brand, he brought that warmth and humour but [we are thinking about] trying to show up as a more modern, relevant, British brand.”
Wilbur is being replaced by real families and real British Gas engineers, promoting its product and services, like HomeCare cover and boiler installation.
But this raises a question – what does relevancy to a consumer’s life actually mean?
The suggestion from British Gas that a penguin can’t be relevant because, well, it’s a penguin is one of the reasons so many of today’s brands look and talk alike, holding a mirror up to the same audience and their likes and dislikes.
On TV, this blinkered view has led to a deluge of mood film adverts featuring a sliding scale of younger to older millennials escaping the city to do “incredible” things.
In short, advertisers have become guilty of equating emotional relevance to physical relevance.
True relevance is about building associations into the brand that drive a compelling meaning.
This means understanding how people feel about things like their family, their homes, their eating habits and so on, and working out how a brand can trigger those key needs.
Mascots, when done well, can shortcut key brand associations to establish an emotional rather than a rational and literal narrative. This has the ability to fundamentally frame a brand and affect perceptions.
Wilbur is a brilliant example of this: warm, humorous, and of course, capable of dealing with the cold.
When your boiler breaks down, you need an engineer. But if all British Gas did was show us engineers, they would be left with a generic frame for the brand – indistinctive from the rest of the category.
We all know what British Gas does, the job of advertising and branding is to make people feel something about them.
We don’t know the underlying reasons behind the British Gas decision, but perhaps part of the issue lay in not implementing some of the key associations throughout the brand at every touchpoint – whether that be through Wilbur or other devices.
And, at its core, that’s the real point. Brand mascots stand as totems to the things that brands should really care about; emotional relevance and associations, standing out from the competitive set with a distinctive story and creating something that really sticks in the mind of the consumer.
It doesn’t matter whether a brand uses a mascot or not, what matters is if they don’t heed the lessons the mascot can teach.
Nir Wegrzyn, CEO, BrandOpus