What we know about brand characters

Provides guidance and reading on brand characters, a non-celebrity animate being that can perform a multitude of roles from the perspective of brand or user.

Brand characters have proven effective across many categories and media to create cut-through and build brands. Choice of brand character is often intuitive rather than strategic or logical. Brand characters should both be consistent and stay fresh over time.

Definition

A brand character is a non-celebrity, animate being. It can be human or non-human and is used to promote a product or service. Non-human characters include animals (real or animated), mythical creatures or product personifications. Characters can symbolise the user, the product or its action, or the issue the brand addresses.

Key insights

  1. Longstanding brand characters can make the leap...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands