Brief: Create a mascot (brand character) named Arzik primarily for the internal audience – employees and partners, which could eventually also interact with the external audience – clients, social media followers.
Company: Arzinger is an independent law company ranked in the top 10 best companies in Ukraine in its industry.
Stage 1: Arzinger's PR manager filled out the brief at Taker | Maker, based on which we selected the perfect executor for this task. During the intro call, Arzinger's marketing team explained why the idea of creating a mascot came about and expressed the assumption that it could be based on a stylized letter A.
As the first step, the project's art director from Taker | Maker asked the Arzinger team to detail the brief and answer the following questions:
Who are we making the mascot for? Who will interact with it?
What should a person feel when they see or interact with the character?
What tasks will the mascot solve? Where do we plan to use it?
What do we envision its character to be like? 3-4 key traits.
If there are references to similar characters that are liked, share them.
If there are any additional thoughts or requirements regarding mandatory details that should be used in the mascot's image, share them.
As a result of the debriefing, the project's art director adopted the following ideas from the Arzinger team:
When interacting with the mascot, the audience should feel positivity, joy, satisfaction, uplift, ease, and pleasant association with work.
The mascot will be involved in two directions of communication with the audience: - Informative: notify, tell, remind, show, explain - Entertaining: amuse, entertain, improve mood, brighten a bad day
Main materials of use: stickers, branded and souvenir products, visuals for social networks. The company also planned to "bring to life" the character by making a soft toy.
In terms of character, the mascot was supposed to be: cheerful, friendly, with a good sense of humor, self-confident, charismatic, but fair, sharp-witted, and articulate. A sort of "company's soul" and a wise guy.
Main requirements: use corporate colors, well-drawn and animated with the possibility of making a toy closely resembling the character.
As a result, the art director proposed 3 different approaches. After comments and several stages of iterations, the team settled on Character No. 2, which they initially wanted to reject due to its conditional similarity to a character from another brand. However, the art director was ready to fight for this option.
The arguments in defense of Character No. 2
Firstly, the other brand was in a different territory, with which Arzinger's business had no intersection. Therefore, the art director saw no conflict here.
Secondly, the mascots were completely different. The other brand had a faceless creature without eyes and a face. Arzik, on the other hand, had a face and vivid emotions.
Thirdly, the shape and color were different. It was the color of the company and the company's letter A. The other brand had different materials, colors, and shapes.
Taking all these points into account, the art director was ready to defend Character No. 2. In his opinion, it had nothing in common with the character of another brand except that both creatures were fluffy. Therefore, he convinced the marketing team to keep it, give it a chance to participate in the selection and discussion of all options, and allow the CEO of the company to see this option as well.
Stage 2: The next step was the refinement of the character with different emotions, poses, and situations. After a call with the marketing team, the art director returned with a list of possible emotional manifestations and situations:
Angry
Festive
Triumphant, victorious
Sad
Joyful
Playful
Scared
Suspicious
Neutral, poker face
Tired
In anticipation
Surprised
Skeptical
To this list, the client proposed adding Arzik engaging in sports:
Running
Cycling
Playing volleyball
The art director also suggested that to enhance certain emotions, additional attributes could be used for the character. For example, a festive hat for festive occasions or a pedestal for the triumphant. In the process of working on Arzik's emotions, it also became clear that the emotions "suspicious" and "skeptical" looked very similar and could be used for communicating both emotions. Instead, the art director added another emotion – "sleepy."
Ivan B., the project's art director from Taker | Maker:
As a basis for Arzik, we took the form of the letter A and the brand's colors. We decided to make him fluffy and charismatic in terms of emotions so that he would subconsciously be perceived as a stress-relief hero. Especially in the form of a toy that can be petted and squeezed. To enhance different emotional expressions and situations, we envisaged the appearance of hands or relevant environmental objects. Arzik can manifest himself in internal communications as a helper on the website, in social media posts, as Telegram or printed stickers, and as a desktop toy.
To contact this art director and invite them to the project, please write to Julia Pysmenna, pysmenna@gmail.com