Japanese Brand Mascots: What to Know for Localization
In Japan, mascots are used to advertise a brand’s image and develop a better partnership with consumers. There are two main things you need to do when conceptualizing a mascot for your business:
- Conceive it.
- Name it.
Your new mascot may be the main reason a prospective client learns more about your company, so guaranteeing that its appearance is appealing and also acceptable is key.
Where do you begin? Design your mascot to advise to clients the services you provide and deal in. If your mascot’s name isn’t as easy to come up with, you have a couple of options.
You can name your mascot after your service. Though it’s possible to name your mascot something that isn’t really in all related to your business, you risk individuals remember your mascot but not your business. Depending on what you are marketing, this could ultimately be destructive to your brand’s image. Domo-kun is one such personality. Though he was originally marketed as the official mascot of NHK, a Japanese TV network, he came to be so prominent overseas that American brand names 7-11 and Target started offering products with his image, without the NHK logo affixed to it.
What makes a perfect mascot?
- Innovative item positioning.
- Kid charm (be simple as well as animal-like).
- Immediate organization (name him after your business).
But if you simply can’t find any kind of excellent wordplay that plays on your brand’s name, there’s another option.
If you sell a substantial item, you could constantly sketch it, animate it by adding some eyes to it, and after that connect to your users to name it.
It’s a difficult line to walk, yet if you are for some mysterious reason opposed to the concept of developing a humanlike mascot out of your products, you could always decide to go the kimo-kawaii method.
Kimo-kawaii is a Japanese compound word created out of the adjectives kimoi (ugly) and kawaii (cute), and means “so unsightly it’s adorable.” This probably isn’t the very best idea for a business that could not manage to work with a specialist personality designer, and also thus should be taken with a grain of salt: success isn’t necessarily likely to occur with all mascots that go with the kimo-kawaii appearance.
Now that we’ve provided you a fast rundown of the guidelines, you’re ready to set out and craft a creature all your own. When you’re finished, you could also take your mascot to the yearly Mascots Summit.
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