Citrus That Sells: Why Brand Mascots Work
Brand mascots in food marketing drive consumer buying decisions, especially among kids, families, and nostalgia-driven adults. They can influence how we remember, enjoy and buy what we eat by sparking connection.
Ask a child to explain what they did in school compared to what happened in their favourite cartoon and see where the detail lies. Spoiler alert… the cartoon often wins and that’s due to the relatable, memorable and interesting characters and their storylines. Brand mascots work to the same principal. When you’re trying to stand out in a competitive market, the smarts behind how brand mascots seek, gain and retain the attention of customers is worth understanding.
Why Use Brand Mascots In Fresh Produce?
Fresh produce is often categorised as a commodity product. The word ‘commodity’ implies that products within this category are interchangeable and, unfortunately, often forgettable. When marketing commodity products, they’re often hard to describe or similar to many others on the shelf beside them. This is where character building helps. It’s one of the few ways to stand out in a category full of ‘sameness’ making them stick in the mind of consumers and influence how we buy, remember and enjoy what we eat.
Using Humour To Reduce Resistance
Mascots, while loveable and cute, often use humour as a way of connecting with consumers. Without getting too technical, humour triggers the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins, making us feel good. As a result, advertising feels less like a sales pitch and more like entertainment. We want to watch again and follow along. Most importantly it becomes memorable.
Take Australia’s iconic bug repellent brand, Mortein. Its long-standing mascot, Louie the Fly, is a tough-talking, funny, mob-style gangster fly whose job is to escape certain death by bug spray… and always fails. Louie became so embedded in Australian culture that he is now part of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. His comedic antics felt more like cartoon episodes than ads, playing out over 50 years on Australian TV. And just when the brand thought their customers had seen enough, a 2012 campaign called ‘Kill or Save Louie’ saw 270,000 people voted to keep him alive.
Emotional Investment
How characters are created for brands usually takes inspiration from what we already know whether true or based in folklore, fairy tales or legends. Take Colonel Sanders for example. He’s based on a real-life person, Harland Sanders, but his image over time evolved into a symbol of tradition, comfort and quality fried chicken. It’s a story that feels both authentic and iconic. Likewise, we could look at Kellogg’s Snap, Crackle and Pop. Born from imagination and inspired by something familiar: elves. Not only do their combined names sound like the product when milk is added, they also embody the fun and mischief of what we’ve come to think about elves. Their stories keep us interested and their longevity over time keeps us invested. Children introduced to these characters become nostalgic purchasers of the products as adults and the cycle begins again with the next generation of children.
Connection Through Imagination
Brand mascots exist within fictional worlds where their products have magical powers. For example, oranges don’t give vampires super strength (nor do vampires exist) but in the Dracula Citrus universe they do.
Our brains subconsciously link these characters and their storylines, translating imaginary narratives into real-world meaning. Take our Dracula mascot’s obsession for blood oranges making him wickedly healthy and super strong. While blood oranges giving vampires super strength is not reality, blood oranges do contain antioxidants, Vitamin C and fibre, all of which contribute to cell repair, gut health and improved immunity. Our Dracula Citrus mascots help customers make the mental leap, turning nutritional benefits into something more memorable and engaging through imagination.
Where this technique becomes questionable is when brands use it to blur the lines between fantasy and reality in misleading ways.
The Misuse Of Brand Mascots
Depending on the intent, brand mascots in food advertising can be a harmless, theatrical way to promote health benefits (like Dracula Citrus) or a tactic to disguise unhealthy products as wholesome.
Toucan Sam has been the product mascot for Froot Loops since 1963. Kellogg’s cleverly created a fictitious world for Sam where villains are constantly after his delicious smelling, fruit tasting cereal. Each installment reinforces messages of Sam’s cereal being valuable as it is constantly under threat of being stolen. Confusingly it is also coined as a ‘fruity treasure’ in many of their ads despite the cereal containing no real fruit content and being loaded with sugar and carbohydrates. Each instalment builds the mascot’s story, adding to his fictitious world and strengthening a nostalgic bond that children carry with them into adulthood.
Sadly, the misuse of these strategies among children is extremely effective. A study published in the journal Obesity Reviews, suggested familiar media character branding appeared to be “a powerful influence on children’s preferences, choices and intake of less healthy foods.”
Food brands promoting misleading or confusing health messages to drive sales is problem that has existed since the dawn of advertising. Thankfully in Australia we have government regulators and industry self-regulation bodies, like the ACCC, AANA and Ad Standards, who monitor and enforce penalties where advertising is misleading or making false claims.
World Action For Health
While the use of some brand mascots, like Toucan Sam, have been the subject of controversy, it’s good to see action taking place to improve the health of our communities. Countries like Chile, Peru, Argentina and Mexico have ruled out the use of character mascots aimed at children for products that are high in sugar, saturated fat, and salt. And it’s having a positive flow-on effect. After adopting this change, Chile saw a 25% reduction in the consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks in the 18 months following a health-driven initiative to add warning labels and ban brand mascots to packaging and remove these unhealthy food options within schools.
Australia has adopted key strategies to improve the health of our communities too. Both the National Preventative Health Strategy (2021 – 2030) and the National Obesity Strategy (2022 – 2032) focus on healthy diets and nutrition by working in health partnerships with many sectors of the community, including agriculture. The vital role our farmers play in the production and distribution of high quality fresh produce only gets so far if we don’t compete for consumer attention against unhealthy food options advertised to the next generation.
Doing Our Part For A Healthier Future
The Dracula Citrus brand was created to shine a light on the Wickedly Healthy benefits of quality Australian citrus in a fun and theatrical way. Our aim is to get more people enjoying citrus as a healthy snack alternative – a hard task when competing for lunchbox space against Roll-ups, Le Snacks and “Fun Size” bags of chips. Our memorable fangy family of brand mascots are designed to give personality to a healthy product that celebrates Aussie agriculture and the benefits of eating fresh produce.
Our mascots, Drac, Vlad, Cara, Dex, Baby, Eddy and Uncle Tang give each Dracula Citrus variety a point of difference, helping us promote the benefits of lesser known citrus varieties like Blood Oranges and Cara Cara Navels, in a category full of sameness. To see our brand mascots click here
We’re proud of the progress Dracula Citrus has made to date within a highly competitive commodity market with our character mascots helping us:
- Break into new markets (including the US and Canada)
- Drive successful seasonal retail campaigns like ‘Halloween’ and ‘Back to School’
- Spark conversations amongst our customers, and
- Turn everyday citrus into a theatrical experience
This strategic approach allows our retailers to build themed displays, helps parents get their kids excited about fruit and helps customers remember us when citrus season arrives.
Closing thought?
In an ocean of interchangeable commodity products, storytelling and building character through brand mascots is a powerful way to stand out. They make a customer’s experience memorable, humorous and meaningful – sometimes spanning generations. And when you’re a navel orange in a sea of over 68+ known varieties of navel oranges, that kind of memorability matters.
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For more information about Dracula Citrus and our family of kooky characters, keep exploring our website or get in touch with our team via email info@draculacitrus.com.au
Dracula Citrus™ is a brand proudly marketed by Pinnacle Fresh.