Since interactivity is becoming more critical over time, it can now be seen in various aspects of branding and marketing. As a result, brands are now exploring the relatively new concept of interactive mascots.
This blog will explore the new form of brand mascots and explain their creation process.
If you are interested in the topic, stay tuned to familiarize yourself with the term and everything you need to know about it.
First, a simple explanation would help.
What Exactly is an Interactive Mascot?
A century ago, brands relied on static mascots. The rapid advancements in technology over the last few decades have transformed brand mascots. Today, 3D animated mascots have become the industry standard, reflecting the ever-changing expectations of audiences.
Read more about brand mascots.
Now, let’s define an interactive mascot.
An interactive mascot relies on active user participation with real-time response, and it can be used in any medium.
The creation of interactive mascots has become a key strategy in modern brand marketing. Visitors play a crucial role in the interactive mascot’s functionality, empowering them to achieve personalized outcomes and make emotional connections.
Platforms hosting these mascots are multisensory, responsive to touch, capable of capturing body movements and recognizing facial expressions. They will be used in interactive displays, interactive walls, AR platforms, holographic projections, websites, etc.
Imagine a user standing in front of a digital display, waving to the mascot. In a split second, the mascot responds by waving back, creating a truly engaging experience.
Lastly, integrating interactivity into already animated mascots will result in a more personalized user experience, which is fascinating.
Therefore, in essence, an interactive mascot:
- Requires active participation from users.
- Offers a totally personalized experience.
- Reacts in Real-time.
- Is multisensory.
Keep all these in mind, and let us make something clear. Interactive mascots are not the same as virtual assistants.
These two brand assets are often overlapped; however, looking closely, we understand there are significant differences between them.
Interactive mascots are designed to increase brand engagement, provoke emotional connection, and gain user interaction for various marketing objectives. On the other side of this comparison, we have virtual assistants that are typically task-oriented.
Assistants function like prerecorded videos. They provide information when a customer presses a button on the display, but they cannot respond to new prompts or user actions.
Mascots have backstories and their own unique characteristics, which allows them to foster a deep connection with the target audience.
If you’re thinking about adding a mascot to your communication plan, our team is here to help.
With over 10 years of experience and the development of more than 2,500 characters, we’ll guide you through every step to unlock the full potential of your new team member!
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Now that you know what we mean by interactive mascots, let’s explore where brands can use them.
Exploring Interactive Mascots Use Cases
Leveraging new technologies requires innovation and creativity. Hence, to take advantage of interactive mascots, brands should think outside the box and find revolutionary ways to use them.
In this section, we will give you some ideas about utilizing interactive mascots.
Digital Displays in Exhibits
These days, displays in modern exhibitions consist of multiple sensors and cameras that enable interaction with attendees.
Brands participating in these exhibits can strategically leverage the advanced capabilities of these displays. They can use them for advertising and effectively direct visitors to their specific booths, enhancing their visibility and potential engagement.
These displays can be used to showcase an animated, AI-powered interactive mascot. The purpose is to capture attention toward displays, promote your brand, and accomplish other marketing milestones.
Exhibit attendees can engage with the mascot by standing in front of digital displays. They can ask questions, chitchat, and have serious conversations on different topics.
As discussed earlier, Sensors embedded in displays capture detailed information about attendees’ body language, allowing the mascot to react appropriately.”
Explanation: “Embedded” is a better collocation for sensors, and streamlining the sentence improves readability.
3D Holograms in Physical Events
You likely know what 3D holograms are and have seen some before. Holograms have been used in marketing and entertainment for years, including for mascots and virtual brand representatives. For example, companies have already employed holographic technology for mascots at events or promotional displays, so it’s not an entirely novel concept.
Imagine the potential of installing the necessary infrastructure at physical events to project your brand mascot as a hologram. The possibilities are exciting.
There can be places where your interactive mascot pops up and engages with visitors, answering their inquiries, explaining different topics, etc.
This allows your brand mascot to serve as an effective promotional tool, engaging and attracting a broader audience.
Advertising in Online Games
Gaming is more popular than ever nowadays. Therefore, online games such as Roblox and Fortnite are great spaces to use your interactive mascots with the goal of advertising your brand.
If your branding principles and guidelines allow, consider some of these games that host your target audience to showcase your interactive mascot, increase brand awareness, and accomplish other marketing milestones.
Imagine the possibilities of creating exclusive in-game content, like skin packs, emotes, dances, accessories, and sidequests, with your mascot at the center. This is a chance to inspire and engage your audience in a whole new way.
Moreover, hosting live events with lots of attractive elements inside the game provides your brand with the chance to turn heads toward the mascot and the brand at the end of the day.
A few years ago, Travis Scott hosted a live concert in Fortnite that was genuinely captivating. Review that concert as a successful case study to find out how to plan for excellent live events.
Interactive Mascots for Customer Service
People are more interested in video calls now than ever. So, if your brand provides them with a way to contact you for support and to purchase through this channel, you will set your business apart from other rivals in the industry.
Staffing human representatives to handle all video calls is often impractical for small and medium-sized businesses. What is the best solution to overcome this issue? The answer is using an interactive version of your brand mascot powered by artificial intelligence.
Thanks to technological advancements, AI has reached a level of sophistication where it can engage in human-like conversations. This is made possible by large language models, or LLMs, instilling confidence in the efficiency of AI in handling video calls.
Thus, when a client initiates a video call, your interactive mascot can promptly respond and assist with their inquiries or issues.
This reduces the need for 24/7 human specialists and results in significant long-term cost savings.
Using Interactive Mascots in Education
Online educational platforms can harness the power of their interactive mascots to make learning more enjoyable. Research has shown that the more fun students have, the more they interact with the lessons, inspiring educators to create engaging and interactive learning experiences.
Moreover, interactive mascots allow educators to provide students with more personalized planning tailored to their preferences. Altogether, a more enjoyable experience is possible with these interactive brand representatives.
With a well-thought-out strategy, you can add a touch of gamification to the educational program and define the interactive mascot as the primary character of the game, giving quests to students and offering them rewards in exchange for completing tasks.
Lastly, proper usage of interactive mascots facilitates social interaction among students, resulting in building a community where attendees discuss with each other and share knowledge.
Utilizing Interactive Mascots in Urban Advertising
Some modern cities have established the infrastructure needed for interactive elements, at least in crowded areas. If your marketing strategy permits, employing your interactive mascot across various city displays offers another valuable opportunity for your brand.
They can be featured on large digital billboards, responding to audience engagement with gestures like blinking, waving, and sending virtual greetings. Or if there is anything you need to announce to the public, your interactive mascot can do it on big screens where many people are commuting in front of them.
Moreover, brands can leverage smaller displays on the ground and lower levels to interact with people directly. As said above, These displays, equipped with sensors, analyze emotions and movements to offer personalized experiences, answering questions and reacting to every action taken.
Taking Advantage of Interactive Mascot as Virtual Retail Assistant
Earlier in this blog, we discussed the differences between an interactive mascot and a virtual assistant. However, in some circumstances, an interactive mascot can also act as a virtual assistant.
Consider this: retailers can entrust their interactive mascots with the task of guiding customers, particularly in the realm of online shopping. This not only showcases a forward-thinking approach but also opens up a world of possibilities.
First, interactive mascots can provide customers with personalized offerings based on their previous behavior and choices. If it is about a fashion-related business, they can help visitors customize outfits to create a one-of-a-kind-looking appearance for themselves.
Additionally, AI-powered mascots, which are virtual assistants here, are able to answer customers’ questions, resolve issues, and offer support in diverse matters.
Overall, when interactive mascots are leveraged as virtual assistants, it is like a brand representative walking around with clients, helping them to find what they like and offering them solutions for their specific problems.
Offering Astonishing XR Experiences
Brands that use VR and AR technologies can utilize their interactive mascots to foster a more engaging and immersive user experience.
Imagine providing VR headset users with your interactive mascot standing at the forefront of your physical store, welcoming visitors with a warm smile.
Moreover, in virtual worlds like the Sandbox, the interactive mascot can represent your brand perfectly on your behalf, answering players’ questions and hosting virtual events occasionally.
In AR applications, interactive mascots are more than just a visual element. They pop up when a user directs the phone camera to a QR code and the mascot appears as an AR character, guiding and assisting users in achieving their goals. Once again, they can react to users’ actions and address their concerns in multiple ways.
Guiding Customers in Physical Stores
Finding goods in gigantic stores is usually challenging for customers. Brands can help clients find what they need quickly by using their mascots, which are also interactive.
The AI integrated into these interactive mascots is responsible for providing customers with the necessary information and helping them find what they need.
3D holograms can also be beneficial in this regard. Their infrastructure can be implemented in different parts of the physical store, ready to help visitors overcome challenges.
These are some of the most common use cases of interactive mascots. In the following section, we will discuss the process of creating an interactive mascot.
Interactive Mascots Technology and Development
Assuming you have no brand mascot yet, let’s start this guide from the early stages.
First and foremost, a comprehensive brand review is an indispensable step. The mascot is not just a symbol; it’s a living representation of your brand. To ensure it does justice to your brand, everyone involved in its creation should have a clear understanding of the brand’s goals and values.
Take a look at the top brand mascots.
We will review the summarized steps for developing an interactive brand mascot in the following section.
1. Build a Story World and Character Identity
The heart of any successful interactive mascot lies in its storytelling. It’s not just about design or functionality—storytelling creates a meaningful emotional bond between the audience and the mascot. Engagement and longevity are rooted in the narrative that shapes the character. Audiences are drawn to mascots because of their story—their challenges, growth, and experiences—rather than just their actions. This emotional bond is the key to driving engagement and building a loyal following.
To create an impactful interactive mascot, the focus is on developing a rich and relatable backstory. Essential questions include: “Who is this character?” “What is their purpose or mission?” and “What drives them?” A strong narrative helps the mascot come to life, making it feel real to the audience despite being a digital creation. The deeper and more relatable the story, the stronger the audience’s emotional connection to the mascot, fostering more profound engagement.
Once the narrative is in place, it’s important to align the mascot’s voice, personality, and tone with the brand’s values and message. Whether the mascot is funny, adventurous, compassionate, or energetic, its traits must consistently reflect the brand it represents. This cohesion makes the mascot a seamless extension of the brand, building authenticity and trust with the audience.
A key factor in maintaining engagement is the mascot’s ongoing journey. Audiences are drawn to characters that grow and evolve. Whether the mascot overcomes challenges, celebrates personal victories, or hits new milestones, this progression makes the story dynamic and engaging. It invites audiences to follow along as part of the mascot’s journey, encouraging long-term interaction and loyalty.
By integrating storytelling across the mascot’s interactions—whether through social media posts, videos, or immersive experiences—audiences feel connected as if they’re part of the story themselves. This approach fosters continuous engagement, making people return to see what happens next.
It should be noted that in addition to having this stage in all of our brand mascot development projects, we also provide storytelling services for brands to create brand stories or advertising campaign narratives.
2. Crafting the Mascot’s Visual Identity
The visual design of an interactive mascot is critical—it shapes the first impression and how audiences perceive and connect with the character. Every design decision, from facial expressions to clothing, should resonate with the target audience and align with the brand’s message.
If your brand promotes fitness products, the mascot should physically reflect an active, healthy lifestyle. This could mean an athletic, toned character that embodies fitness, reinforcing the product’s credibility. Likewise, if the brand focuses on family-friendly dining, the mascot might take on a more humorous or approachable look—perhaps a jovial, food-loving character who delights in sharing relatable, funny food experiences. This type of design helps create a friendly, warm connection with the audience.
By customizing the mascot’s appearance to match both the product and the audience, we ensure that the visual design enhances the brand’s message and encourages engagement. Every detail—from facial features to wardrobe—plays a role in creating a character that is visually appealing and emotionally relatable.
In more advanced cases, mascots may also include subtle design elements that adapt to audience preferences or reactions, further strengthening engagement by making the character feel even more connected to its followers.
3. Animating the Brand Mascot
This part is more technical than the previous section. So, you need skilled professionals to handle the job and create an animated version of the brand mascot. This overview will help you familiarize yourself with the process, enabling you to monitor progress more effectively.
Animating involves modeling, rigging, and designing its movements and reactions in various situations. Remember that an interactive mascot must respond in real time, so smooth gesture movement is essential.
Several technologies play a crucial role in this phase, including motion capturing and gesture designing. Software programs like Blender and Maya are instrumental in this process. In the hands of talented experts, these powerful tools can texture and render the 3D model into moving animation, evoking emotions and setting the stage for an interactive mascot.
Designing poses and facial expressions is also an integral part of this stage. A well-established 3D mascot should be able to convey different emotions in different situations. For example, a state of shock when a user takes an unexpected action or a sense of joy when they praise the brand.
Usually, a real actor goes to the studio and performs the needed movement. Afterward, specialists map their movements into the 3D model. By refining technical aspects, the animated version will have smooth, detailed movements that appeal to audiences.
4. AI-Driven Interactions (Optional)
Incorporating AI into an interactive mascot can take engagement to the next level by enabling real-time interactions and personalized experiences, but it’s optional and depend on purposes.
AI-driven mascots can respond dynamically to audience questions or behavior, giving them a more human-like presence. This makes interactions feel personal and immediate, building stronger audience connections.
As discussed earlier, AI technologies are the key elements that make interactive mascots useful. Therefore, specialists leverage multiple artificial intelligence engines for various purposes.
First and foremost, LLMs, or large language models, are needed to understand users’ requests and prepare the correct answers. In fact, LLMs form the foundation that fuels interactivity in brand mascots.
In addition to LLMs, voice engines are required to enable the interactive mascot to speak. These engines give the brand’s agent a voice to communicate with audiences.
Lastly, there are engines dedicated to movement control and enabling real-time interaction with various user actions. Experts define specified reactions for different situations, and movement engines are accountable for forcing the mascot to react correctly to each user action.
It’s important to clarify that an interactive mascot may use a combination of AI engines for speech (using LLMs), real-time gesture recognition (machine learning-based computer vision), and voice synthesis systems.
For example, in the case of unexpected actions, the engine will instruct the mascot to act surprised with appropriate facial expressions, a change in voice, and predefined gestures.
By combining these engines, the mascot will harness AI to its full potential, functioning as an intelligent entity responsible for representing the business.
Since creating interactive mascots is challenging and requires special skills, outsourcing it to professionals is probably the best decision for many businesses.
5. Implementation Across Platforms
The final step is bringing the interactive mascot to life across a variety of platforms. The character can be deployed in numerous ways—whether through social media, interactive displays, augmented reality (AR), or even virtual reality (VR). The goal is to integrate the mascot into mediums that enhance audience interaction and engagement.
For example, using AR, audiences could engage with the mascot in real-world settings through their smartphones or interactive experiences at live events. In VR spaces, mascots can offer immersive brand experiences that feel more personal and engaging. These applications make the mascot a dynamic part of the customer journey, extending beyond traditional marketing channels.
By thoughtfully selecting the right platforms and technologies, the interactive mascot becomes a living extension of the brand, driving sustained engagement and fostering deeper emotional connections with the audience.
Need Help For Creating an Interactive Mascot?
Interactive mascots offer a fresh and engaging way for brands to connect with their audiences. As interactivity and AI shape the future of brand communication, mascots stand out as an innovative tool to create meaningful and lasting impressions.
At Dream Farm Agency, we have a complete in-house team to support your mascot development journey. With a dedicated design studio, experienced technical developers, and storytelling experts, we’ve crafted over 2,500 unique characters. Whether you’re ready to bring a mascot to life or just exploring if it’s the right fit, we’re here to guide you through every step.
Let’s discuss how an interactive mascot could elevate your brand’s communication!
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