How to Manage a Mascot Program
More than performing
Let’s look into the nitty gritty of what makes a mascot program efficient.
A mascot is only as effective as it’s program manager. If you aren’t getting your character out in front of people, how will they know who the character is and what brand they represent? There’s a perfect mix of visibility across community appearances and amount featured in social media content plus performer management and costume care that is needed for success. The perfect recipe is different for every mascot program and varies depending on what brand the character represents.
Finding Appearance Opportunities
Getting your character out in the public is the best way to become familiar with the public. How can you find these opportunities?
Let’s start with the obvious; mascots are visual branding tools and need to be out amongst the public to spread awareness. What’s the best strategy to achieve this? It’s not like you can drop them off on a street corner to walk around promoting your brand (you can but let’s avoid doing so).
Consider where you’re most likely to run into potential customers. The easiest answer is a community festival with a dedicated vendors can set up and show off their goods and services. Perhaps there are specialized festivals or conventions that your demographic flock to (trade shows anyone?). Look into what types of events are in your area that align with your brand’s identity and see how you can be a part of them. Ideally, also have a booth or table set up to show potential customers who you are and what you do while the mascot can draw interest to your setup.
Where else?
Depends on what type of brand or company you’re with.
If you have any sponsorships or partnerships with other organizations, see how you can start using your mascot at their business and /or events. Consider writing in to your contracts for a certain number of activations with your characters.
If you’re a kid-centric organization, figure out if you can get into schools and camps with an educational element.
For sport organizations, get your mascot involved with player initiatives or keep tabs on what your sponsors are doing and see if you can get involved.
What about social media?
There’s a fine line with mascot usage on social media. It is very easy to go overboard and lose impressions and interactions.
It is nearly impossible for a brand to solely rely on their mascot to promote their brand, especially with a new character. Consumers need to understand what your brand offers and a mascot can’t always make that connection. You can create content with your character handling the goods you sell or performing the services you provide, but you’ll quickly realize there’s a limit to how much content you can create.
Sure, your mascot can have their own social media accounts to post content specific to them, but that’s hard to grow a following for characters outside of the sports industry. Not to mention it creates the need to constantly create more content for a new account.
What about actual program management?
What’s the behind the scenes operations look like for a successful mascot program?
Just like any successful operation, organization, communication, and planning are vital to running a successful mascot program. For any appearances, try to understand as much about the event as possible before arriving. Any information you can learn regarding the type of event, type of audience, parking situation, changing area, etc. will make the appearance run smoother. (PS- don’t settle for a public bathroom as a place to change)
You should track every appearance and usage of the character, even when their picture shows up in the local newspaper to understand how visible they are.
You should reflect or debrief after every community appearance regarding why you were there and in what capacity, how it ran, was your target audience there, did any issues happen, did you learn anything from the event, does it make sense to do similar events in the future etc.
As far as social media, look at the numbers the content featuring your mascot compared to content without them. How do they compare? Is it work featuring your character more or less?
And managing performers?
How to avoid scheduling disasters
How do I get my mascot out there?
Consider the following
In a perfect world, you know of every appearance request well before the day it actually happens. In the real world, you get requests or find out about opportunities at the last second with little time to commit. As a program manager, you need to constant communicate with your performers about their availability and what events are coming up.
You should always be transparent with your performers about what the appearance is for, who will be there (from your company and what type of audience), and logistic details (point of contact, meeting point, changing area, etc.). You want to eliminate as much guesswork about an event as possible.
Have more questions about operating your mascot program?
Connect with us and see how we can improve your program.
Anything else?
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