For some, it’s been the albatross around their neck. For others, it proved to be the lucky charm of the Turkish Evil Eye… romsha singh of 4Ps B&M describes the story of how mascots have been used/misused in the war on customer mindspace
Remember the amnesiac, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon’s character in Bourne Identity), who suffers from an identity crisis? A state where he ends up fighting a battle each day, desperate to know his true identity? A bleak situation in which none of us would ever like to be stuck, right? As human nature indicates, each one of us wants to be recognised and acknowledged as a part of a society christened with an identifiable name. Ditto for companies who wanted a representative for the brands they gave birth to, and the term ‘mascot’ was coined.
A mascot might just mean a “costumed character” based on the character design used in public appearances, but ask the companies and they will tell you it’s true worth, especially in terms of the value this rampantly significant marketing tool adds to their brand everyday. From Hollywood to the corporate world, brands and their identities thereon have created illustrious case studies, if not history itself. What Captain Jack Sparrow has become for Pirates of the Caribbean, Ronald is for McDonald. And if you were comfortably impressed that Agent 007 has enough pull to epitomise a particular movie series (which you obviously now recall), then imagine the corporation that comes to your mind when we whisper ‘Maharajah’, and there you have the answer to our hypothesis – mascots have powers beyond what ordinary marketing can achieve.
Mascots or mass-cuts?
The successful history of mascots in India dates back to 1946, when Air India’s Bobby Kooka along with JWT’s Umesh Rao created the mustachioed Maharajah for the public sector aviation giant. In reality, this charming and always at-your-service mascot was used by Air India only on its letterheads initially... till on another inventive day, Kooka asked why this powerhouse of a mascot could not actually take center-stage on all Air India advertisements. And he did!
Interestingly, the Maharajah actually took on the character of a few employees of JWT, who were around when he was created. The wit – he borrowed from Kooka himself; his cuteness of speech from two stalwarts Josephine Tuor and Duru Dadlani; his classicism from one Waghulkar; his Grossman roundness from a well-endowed team member Sudhir Deokar; the charm from a mercurial contributor S.R. Garud; and his downright naughtiness from a cherubic personality we know of as Bahadur Merwan. “In time, the line between creator and the created disappeared. The question ‘Who created the Maharajah?’ could well be upturned to, ‘Who did the Maharajah create?’...”, comments Ivan Arthur, former National Creative Director, JWT, currently Vice-Chairman, AICAR Business School.
It’s hard to imagine that today, the same carefully nurtured mascot Maharajah has been dropped unceremoniously by power that may be at Air India; though Arthur does grudgingly accept, “In the absence of anything else to set the airline apart, Air-India today is merely a product without the Maharajah. Not a brand.”
That’s the story of India’s first truly global mascot. But how can we forget that ideal housewife of the ‘80s who in no time won total recall of many mothers and wives with her firm and direct “Bhaisaab!” and her clincher of a line, “Surf Ki Kharidari Mein Samajhdari Hai,” brilliantly positioning the product as the ideal value for money proposition?
“Mascots represent the true soul and identity of the brand personality and give it form and shape that is embedded in popular imagination for times to come. The success, however, depends on how well the fit is in terms of product, promise and imaginative creation of the mascot persona,” opines Lalitaji’s creator Alyque Padamsee, advertising guru. This rotormouth and shrewd Indian housewife swept popular imagination in the ‘80s and was a mascot fashioned on Alyque’s mother – a strict, no-nonsense woman who believed in extracting the best bargains. “Lalitaji was the chachi everyone loved to hate, but missed when she was not around,” he adds.
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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