For as long as I can remember, I’ve been intrigued by the psychology of branding.

If you’re not a marketer, a brand's underlying influence on your behaviour goes unnoticed. 

Most buyers, whether consumers or business people, believe they make purchase decisions with rational logic.

In reality, we buy based on emotion.

Elements of trust, value, and utility come into play, but they are inevitably tied back to how you feel about something. An internal perception that is auto-generated relative to your life's experiences and the way you interact with brand stimuli. 

Marketers need to understand why that behaviour happens and how they can deliver a brand experience that unlocks the right kind of emotions. The emotions that attract, convert, and delight customers.

Creating a brand identity

“Brand identity is more than just finding the right logo to place on coffee cup sleeves or mount above your front door. It’s about crafting a personality that amplifies the core elements to your brand’s DNA.” - Wayfair Senior Brand Manager, Jared Rosen

Great brands are trusted because they elicit the emotions of a customer that tie to a deep connection of meaning and purpose. 

The brand elements work in unison to embody the mission, values, and spirit of the business.

The brand identity encompasses how your team interacts, how your customers perceive you, and how you operate daily.

At Cape, our business DNA is underpinned by three core elements:

• Our mission of ‘Complete Expense Nirvana’ for our growing customer base;
• Our values of Simpler is smarter; Actions need ownership; Visible for all; and Empathy not ego, and;
• Our dedication to diversity and inclusion

We are an odd bunch of humans with a common objective and a shared value set.

So how do you bring that to life in a brand? How do you make that diverse set of personalities shine?

One of the most effective ways is with mascots.

Brand mascots

Mascots are characters that add personality and emotion to a brand. They represent the values of an organisation or the functional utility of a product.

In most cases, mascots are used in marketing content, websites, advertisements, and product material. They are an ambassador for the DNA of a business and a brand's identity.

One study found that a single brand mascot can improve the emotional connection with customers by up to 41%.

Here’s why brand mascots, used in the right way, are so effective as a branding tool and why we’ve got on board with the concept at Cape:

• Differentiation - Brands that incorporate fun and personality into their marketing help a business stand out from the competition. This is particularly noticeable in an industry such as FinTech, where punchy colours and quirky characters are unique. 
• Memorability - It's how our brains work; a mascot or character is immediately more memorable than a generic stock photo, logo, or marketing message. 
• Meaning - A mascot conveys more meaning with a cheeky smile or subtle animation than a body of text. In a world with diminishing attention spans, reducing the time it takes to deliver a message gives you a leg up over the competition. 
• DNA - Mascots encompass a brand's personality and a team's spirit, values, and backstory. All in a few seconds. 
• Emotional bond - By representing the DNA of your team and what your company stands for, mascots create a strong bond with customers that hold the same values and beliefs. 
• Trust & engagement - If something conveys significant meaning in a split second, is memorable, different, and emotionally tied to your values, you are more likely to trust and engage with it. 

How we came up with Cape’s mascots

The old Cape brand was known for its quirky hand-drawn characters. They captured the essence of where our team came from and its collective personality. 

But we recently transitioned to a brand with a softer colour palette punctuated by a more confident and dynamic personality. Light pinks, steel blues and floral whites at the forefront, balancing professionalism with retro character. 

The new colour scheme comes with sleek lines and curves in the shape of ribbons - or, more aptly, receipts - that talk to Cape’s mission.

A special mention needs to go to our Creative Director, John Penney for bringing this vision to life.

To align with the new brand direction, our mascots needed an update. So John got to work.

The first of Cape’s mascots is the ‘Nirvana Yogi’ - you’ll catch it hanging out on our homepage or levitating in our LinkedIn posts. 

The inspiration for this mascot came from our mission of ‘Complete Expense Nirvana’ but it also represents the humble beginnings of our journey, born out of the pandemic, on a laptop, from the beach at Manly. 

Then, we have the emotive bunch.

This group of mascots are fun, quirky, and packed with personality. They represent our diverse team and customer base - you’ll spot them sprinkled throughout our marketing comms to illustrate various emotions. 

Lastly, the functional bunch.

The final batch of mascots takes a more functional approach without losing character. They talk to the features and benefits of our product; saving money, capturing receipts, crunching numbers, accessing capital, securing data, and accessing insights. All the fun stuff that comes with expense management!

Wrapping up

All-in-all our mascots are there to nourish our brand, embellish the emotions of our customers, and represent the values and diversity of our team.

They're memorable, expressive, functional, meaningful, and… kind of fun! Just like us at Cape.