The Role of Mascots' Characters of the Advertisement Animation Films in the Food Industry Branding

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

University of Art

Abstract

This paper is based upon the Mascot character role in food animated T.V commercial. With a glance at the history of Mascot character designing, the essential and vital power of Mascot character in the field of advertising can be imaginable. The key role of Mascot characters in the realm of branding with regard to unique, iconic and exclusive traits of advertising animation, changed the policy of promotional business products for today’s society in their benefits. Over the last decades, the Mascot characters have been able to put themselves on display in the fields of commercial products in television advertisements. The roles of Mascot characters in the recognition of commercial products caused their connection with the notion of brand making. Since food products constitute a huge part of commercial products, in this study, the impact of the Mascot characters on the commercial animations of food products has been the subject of careful consideration as the main issue, with the purpose of representing the identity of the brands of these products. Towards this purpose, the authors, with reliance on the views of researchers, scholars and animation theorists like Paul wells and brand strategists like Wally Olins, Gillian Dyer, Greg Myers, Sabrina Neeley, Ronald Nedrich, Judith Garretson, Margaret Callcott, Richard Mizerski, David Shuman, Roeder and psychologists like Jean Piaget are trying to expound the following issues: determination of effective Mascot characters indices on the relationship between the consumers and the food products, the relationship between Mascot characters and trust and belief in the commercial products and Mascot characters as a new approach to animated commercials, in order for the commercial products to remain memorable. Based on the findings of this paper, due to the Mascot character, the trust between the consumer and the food products has been created. The more audience believes in deeper Mascot character, the greater trust for brand identity will emerge. Among these, there are three variables, "Mascot Expertise", "Nostalgia" and "Relationship between Mascot character and product" that can play a significant role in the credibility of Mascot characters in advertising animation. Also, Mascot character can create a suitable platform for the promotion of brand identity of food products through new structures of advertising scenarios. The presence of Mascot character in advertising animations also affects the variables of the audience's psychology and their reaction to food products. One of the other benefits of Mascot Character in advertising animations is to turn a typical consumer into a perpetual consumer of a particular product by "inciting a sense of willingness to consume" that leads to an increase in "brand experience" among audiences. The other finding of this paper is the presence of Mascot characters in advertising animations in "Creating a positive attitude toward a commercial product" which is considered as the ultimate goal of advertising campaigners and brand strategists. The research method in this study is descriptive-analytic and data collection through library documents and sources. Furthermore, Mascot character index samples have been applied for the retrieval of the above mentioned characteristics.

Keywords


بابک معین، مرتضی (1385)، نشانه شناسی و تبلیغات، پژوهشنامه فرهنگستان هنر، شماره 1، صص 92-103.
کریمی، سیده تارا (1387)، مسکات، نوبت اول، انتشارات مارلیک، تهران.
 
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