The BAM Mascot Family Blog

When you think about mascots, you might first think about sports mascots, mascots for school athletic events or for professional teams. Big global brands such as Pepsi, McCain, and Crayola have used performers in mascot costumes to build an association between their brand and their audience.

You don’t, however, have to be an international company to have a brand mascot. Small businesses can use mascot marketing to reach and connect with their customers.

A great example is Jaco, of Jaco's Bayfront Bar & Grille in Florida.

It will soon be Halloween - the biggest costume night of the year, and the night when all kinds of strange and wonderful creatures make an appearance. In keeping with the spirit of the time, I thought I'd share with you one of our monster mascots – The Quinsigamond Community College Wyvern.

Mascots can be modelled after animals, characters, objects, people, and fantasy creatures, monsters or any other subject your imagination can conjure. Traditional Halloween monsters are often based on old legends made into horror films, and so the usual line-up includes; Frankenstein, the Mummy, Werewolf, Dracula.

Monsters that are chosen to represent a school, sports team or brand, however, are often based on mythical creatures like dragons or on imaginary comic figures, designed to entertain and make people smile. Monsters are not all scary and frightening - some are just whimsical and fun!

Mascot have fans, and if your mascot has been a spokesperson or representative of your brand for a long time, chances are they are not only part of your brand equity, but have a large fan base.

Traditionally, fans only had a chance to interact with your mascot during public appearances, but that has all changed with the tremendous growth and popularity of social media.

While there is nothing like shaking hands with a mascot or watching them perform to a crowd, many mascots are taking their message to social media and opening up Facebook pages and Twitter accounts! This increases the reach of a brand mascot and can also boost marketing efforts.

You see them everywhere ... at sports games, schools, and events…even at tradeshows, on twitter and on commercials. From the GEICO Gecko to Ronald McDonald, mascots are becoming an increasingly popular phenomenon across many different channels.