Digital Connections

by Orli Sharaby

From the hokey Juan Valdez to Burger King’s masked mascot The King, from the Budweiser iguanas to the Geico gecko, marketers have long used fictional characters to humanize their brands. Now some companies are taking advantage of social media tools to bring those characters to life in ways never before possible – connecting with consumers in fun, sometimes kitschy, and ultimately more meaningful ways.

Here are some success stories of brand mascots in social media:

• Wakamaru Nyt, Uniqlo’s blogging robot staffer
  In early September 2008, a new face appeared at Uniqlo’s Soho flagship – the face of Wakamaru Nyt, reportedly the world’s first retail robot. While much of Wakamaru’s charm lies in his real-life presence at the store, the robot also has a blog and a Facebook page, often links to photos that people have tagged of him on Flickr, and also has plans for a Twitter feed and MySpace profile in the near future. In effect, Wakamaru Nyt has become like any other internet-savvy person living in New York in 2008, utilizing multiple online social platforms to make plans (such as the game of tag he organized in NYC’s Battery Park) and connect with his friends and fans.

Wakamaru, Uniqlo's newest intern

• Truman Greene, H&R Block’s biggest fan
  In late 2007 and early 2008 leading up to Tax Day, 360i helped H&R Block roll out a multi-platform social media campaign that relied heavily on a character named Truman Greene. Billed as H&R Block’s biggest fan, Truman served as comic relief about a subject that, let’s face it, is hard to find humor in. His YouTube videos, which have racked up nearly 600,000 views, comprise mainly of improvised songs, skits, and guitar performances about doing your taxes, and his MySpace page serves as a place to get useful info on tax policy and test your tax knowledge – with a little humor thrown in as well.
• Gil the Crab, Honda’s mascot on MySpace and beyond
  A character that Honda developed in 2006 for web videos to promote the Element, Gil the Crab proved so popular that it made its way into TV ads and was given its very own MySpace profile and YouTube channel. An unlikely mascot for Honda, Gil is an absurd character – but sometimes, when it comes to online social media, absurd works best. Besides being the repository for his videos, commercials, and online games, Gil’s MySpace page chronicles the crab’s persistent troubles with the law. The page has nearly 70,000 friends, a petition to “Save the Crab” was signed by over 26,000 people, and Gil’s videos on YouTube have collectively received hundreds of thousands of views.
• S.A.R.A.H., the Tweeting house from Sci Fi’s Eureka
  In the Sci Fi Channel’s critically acclaimed show Eureka, there is an artificially intelligent house named S.A.R.A.H. (Self Actuated Residential Automated Habitat). With an audience of gadget buffs and technology early adopters, the Sci Fi Channel astutely recognized that Twitter was the perfect platform on which to engage the show’s core fans. S.A.R.A.H.’s Twitter feed now has nearly 3,500 followers, and has received exponentially more exposure through good press. The tweeting house has even been the subject of the world’s first “Twitterview” – a live interview via Twitter – with the popular design site NOTCOT. While the initiative did not involve creating a new and unique “mascot” per se, the existing character of S.A.R.A.H. was given new life and greater depth in social media, allowing a broader connection with true fans of the show.

In the right context, fictional characters can have a powerful impact on the way consumers perceive your brand; this has been the case throughout the history of marketing. But now, with myriad social media platforms available, brands are able to use these characters to open a meaningful dialogue with consumers at the individual level. With the right mascot, the right platform, and the right timing, character-based social marketing can be hugely successful.