The ad archivist: Why do some brand mascots stand the test of time?

Perhaps it‘s not more widely known because relatively few objects in it are truly unique (aside from our extensive collection of original illustrations).

The ubiquity and familiarity of many of the objects, however, is part of the point. If you want to see how brands show up in culture, you can‘t expect many of the objects to be rare – at least not when they’re first produced.

For brands to show up in culture they need to have an impact, which means producing objects en masse that reach a lot of people. Although, many such objects – from wrappers to labels and beer mats – were by their nature ephemeral and deemed not worth saving, which is why they are often much rarer today.

Alternatively, if objects weren‘t produced in such high numbers, by the big companies of the day, then they are less likely to feature in our Gallery, and indeed in any museum – unless they were such good examples of whatever they were that someone somewhere wanted to preserve them.

So, that‘s how we see how brands showed up in culture: they either did it a lot or did it very well, or, occasionally both. Creativity is a very powerful tool if wielded well: let‘s take the example of mascots.

Little witches

The word mascot is the diminutive of ‘masco’, meaning witch or wizard in provincial French (from Provence, should you care). The idea of a mascot, or ‘little witch‘, then meant first a lucky charm but was soon applied to sports team mascots and company mascots. The oldest which survives today is “Larry”, the Quaker Oats Man, originally from around the 1880s.

What are mascots today? They’re recognizable IP and a shortcut to presenting a brand. Think about it this way: mascots are the face of brands, which themselves are the face of companies and the products they sell.

Even we have a mascot: Globey, a representation of a globe, who is often found with a paintbrush in hand. Globey is easy to recognize and flexible (using spray cans, brushes, and rollers depending on the task at hand). Globey’s eyes also serve as a visual device we can (and do) use separately from the rest of the mascot. If you have seen any of our large-scale but twisted classical painting murals around London then you’ll know our branding even if you don’t know you know our brand.

Utility survives

One of our more fun collections is the plastic Japanese mascots, brought back from the UK by me earlier this year after raiding every toy shop in Tokyo for good, but inexpensive, examples.

Brands today show up less in culture using physical objects than ever before – gone are the crisp-themed pencil cases in the classrooms of yesteryear. Our Japanese mascots, many 30-50 years old, were sometimes simply fun figurines; their purpose was to be displayed. But some often also had a function: as money boxes.

If you want to stick around or be saved, then be useful. That was true of mascots showing up in culture then as money boxes, and should be true today but often isn‘t. Utility aside, physical mascots were often saved because they were fun and didn‘t degrade – because plastic often doesn‘t. They endured because they were real and took up space. Throwing them away took effort and why would you, if they were worth saving?

I‘m sure my metaphor for modern advertising is thinly veiled: I‘m not necessarily saying brands that show up in culture have to do so by being useful, although it‘s hard to see this hurting a brand. And I‘m not necessarily suggesting that whatever you produce should be worth saving.

Actually, that is what I‘m clearly and obviously saying... if you‘re going to produce any work at all in the field of communications, give me a reason to care, so that one day decades from now perhaps, a frustrated archivist like me might remember your work – and consumers might too.