How we came up with a mascot and connected an exotic animal with the brand values of a technology IT company

Hello! This Roman KashenkovSenior Public Relations Specialist, and Maxim NadyrovHead of Client and Affiliate Marketing Department at Cyberprotect. In this article we would like to talk about how we came up with, developed and implemented our company’s mascot into corporate culture and communication and what it cost us. It's time to get acquainted – meet the red panda Max.

About the meaning and importance of mascots

Where did mascots come from and what are they?

The term “mascot” comes from the English word mascot, which translates as “talisman”. There is an interesting story about how the concept came into use: in 1880, the comic opera La mascotte premiered in Paris, telling the story of a peasant girl who had the mystical power to bring good luck to those around her. And the creators were inspired to create this work by a talisman gift given for good luck. After the performance, the word “mascot” meaning “talisman” first entered French and then English usage, and later spread throughout the world.

Today, a mascot most often means a person, an animal, or some kind of anthropomorphic mascot character that personifies an association: a brand, a commercial organization, an educational institution, a sports team, a community, or an event. A mascot doesn’t just bring the brand to life in the eyes of the audience—it forms a lasting emotional connection between the character and the company.

The first mascots as we know them appeared in sports at the end of the 19th century, when teams began using various animals as their mascots. Clubs hired special people who dressed up as a mascot and entertained spectators in the stands, demonstrating the fighting spirit of the opposing team. And already in the middle of the 20th century, mascots came to the corporate world and began to be actively used in marketing.

Mascot characters are involved in various communication campaigns and tools: they are used in logos, promos, videos, street and digital banners, printed and, in principle, any other branded products (T-shirts, mugs, hoodies, keychains, etc.) . As shown research British company System1 Group, brand advertising that includes mascots increases sales profits by a third compared to regular advertising. Experts are confident that the use of mascots directly contributes to brand development. It is estimated that they remain in consumers' memories for decades.

Mascots for commercial companies solve a number of important problems:

Contact with the consumer. Personas make it much easier to build trust between a brand, product and consumer. Funny and cute characters are much easier for people to perceive compared to dry numbers, percentages and calculations.
Help sell. Mascots represent products and services, helping to increase sales and engage the right audience.
The fight for customer loyalty. Competition forces companies to come up with various ways to stand out in the market, talk about their advantages, and build an associative chain: character – product – brand.
Staff member. Technologies make it possible to turn a virtual character into a completely real employee of the company. In many organizations, the mascot works, for example, as a community manager or SMM manager, helping clients solve various problems and answering their questions.
Creates content. Often the mascot acts as the voice of the brand; it is through him that the company talks about new products, upcoming events, and broadcasts its position on certain issues.

About mascots in the Russian IT industry

It is now difficult to imagine a modern IT company, just like a sports team, without its own mascot. The reason for this is high competition in the market and, as a consequence, the reigning competitive spirit. In addition, such mascot characters significantly increase brand awareness and help explain to customers in simple words all the intricacies of complex products. Moreover, the very appearance of a mascot is a news feed, and any information activities related to it are readily picked up by the media and Telegram channels. Let us recall several striking examples of talismans from Russian practice:

Midori Kuma is the Kaspersky Lab mascot, a green bear. The character not only talks to people about cybersecurity, but also actively participates in corporate life.
Goose Gosha is the mascot of Ozon Tech, a green goose. This mascot was invented by the company's engineers themselves, choosing the winner at the so-called mascot.
Cats Tim and Ficha are the mascots of the IT department of Ingosstrakh. They are used to increase brand awareness among the professional community and develop IT culture within the company itself.
T-Rex is Selectel's mascot, a green dinosaur. This year the company’s mascot celebrates its 12th anniversary, during which time the character has become an integral part of the team.
Osip is the OCS mascot, an orange octopus. Osip can safely be called a veteran among the mascots of Russian IT brands. This year OCS celebrates its third decade.

TEX is the mascot of InfoTeKS, an armadillo. First, in 2011, the company took patronage of the armadillo from the Moscow Zoo, and in 2019 made it its mascot.

About how they work on preparing mascots

Despite their rather utilitarian purpose, mascots are a very personal and truly beloved character in many companies. This is due to the fact that the birth of a mascot or brand often occurs in the process of joint work on the image and character of the character. In the IT field, the creation of a mascot often turns from a brainstorming session into a competition between teams of creators from among employees – the so-called mascot. As part of the event, several groups are selected from among those wishing to participate in the project, which generate ideas and present them to a predetermined jury. It makes the final decision and selects the winning team, which receives not only the right to bring its idea to life, but also some kind of prize. Of course, this is only one of the options: often the decision is simply made by the company’s management, CEO or top management, marketing or PR department.

The work on creating a mascot can be divided into several stages:

Determining the target audience of the character and what feelings it should evoke in the consumer.
Definition of character type. There are a lot of options: it can be both animals and inanimate objects, cartoon characters, etc.
Rendering. They make the first sketches of the mascot image and story illustrations.
Determining the age, gender and character of the mascot. The character of a mascot can be different, it all depends on the tasks assigned: cheerful, hooligan, serious.
Context of use. The channels where and how the mascot will be used are determined: outdoor advertising, digital, video, BTL, etc.
Preparing sketches. Now you can draw the final version of the mascot.

This was the case with us at Cyberprotect. Various structural divisions worked on the image of the mascot for several months, offering their own options. At the same time, the development of the mascot within the company was led by affiliate marketing, but various departments were closely involved in the process – from HR to PR and educational areas. Colleagues not only shared their ideas and findings, but also proposed specific options for mascots: from choosing a character to a name, from an AI-generated appearance to the concept of its application in practice. Thus, the project manager received many applications, designed in the form of bright and colorful presentations, not so much with visual images, but with a detailed explanation of why our company needs this particular mascot character: colleagues went through the values, behavioral characteristics and meanings, described the image of the mascot in communications and images, and described it with five adjectives.

A capybara and a snow leopard, a dog and a cat, red-eared turtles and even a muskrat – these are just a few of the options for mascot characters proposed by our employees. A full pitching of applications was carried out, in which all employees involved in the mascot development process, including several top managers and department heads, could become spectators and participants.

After a thorough research and analysis of all the options received, as well as consultation with the company’s management, it was decided to choose the red panda (also known as the red panda, cat bear, red panda or Himalayan raccoon).

For visualization and drawing of the mascot, we decided to turn to professionals. As a result, this task was taken on by the full-service digital agency Fistashki. Their portfolio includes work with HP, Casio, Samokat, Prostokvashino, Magnit, Microsoft, Intel and dozens of other well-known brands and companies. Based on a detailed brief, a presentation was prepared in which the red panda was presented in various images, with different objects, in different situations. A guidebook with key colors, angles, poses and emotions was also presented, which was refined several times with the participation of company employees involved in the process.

“Working on creating a mascot became an incredibly interesting and creative process for our team. We were extremely pleased to work with the client team, who trusted us and shared with us the general positive mood on the project. We delved into the study of this amazing animal, its charisma and characteristics, to create an image that reflects the dynamics and friendliness of the brand. Each stage of development, from the first sketches to the final implementation, brought a lot of positive emotions. It was really cool to see how ideas turn into something vibrant and unique that can inspire and delight others.”,” noted Ivan Neprozvanov, art director of Fistashki.

The date for the presentation of the mascot to employees was not chosen by chance. This year, International Red Panda Day coincides with Cyberprotect's birthday – September 21. In general, the red panda is more than 200 years old – it was first discovered in 1821.

What does the red panda symbolize?

So, as a mascot for our company, we chose the image of one of the cutest animals on the planet (subjective, but just look at her!) – the red panda.

Why did we choose the red panda as our mascot?

The red panda is rightfully considered one of the cutest animals on Earth. The zoologists who discovered it used the epithets “brilliant”, “bright”, “beautiful”. The most suitable animal for a mascot!
The red panda is a symbol of good luck, prosperity, wealth, friendship and harmony in Chinese culture. This animal is depicted on the money of many eastern countries. It is believed that meeting a cute animal promises success in business and good news. So everyone who sees our mascot will definitely be lucky on this day. And the implemented Cyberprotect products will help our customers achieve prosperity.

Red pandas are a unique species listed in the Red Book. Our company offers unique solutions in the field of data backup and recovery.
The protection and conservation of red pandas has become increasingly important in light of the threats they face today. One of the main goals of our products is to protect our customers from cyber threats and data loss. Cyberprotect solutions are the Red Book for important information. The information is completely protected in it!
Red pandas can change their color from orange-brown to rusty red – an excellent ability of animals to adapt to their environment. Likewise, Cyberprotect solutions can be easily integrated into the IT infrastructure of any company and work with data of any complexity.

Red pandas are family animals and prefer to live in groups. A friendly team is one of the values in our #cyberphilosophy. Team cohesion is important to us, where mutual respect and mutual assistance reign in professional growth and personal development. If recently we had a very small team, today the number of our employees, true professionals, exceeds 400 people. Thousands of customers use our products, and the number of partners offering Cyberprotect solutions throughout Russia has exceeded 1,400.
The red panda is a hardworking animal that actively seeks food and loves bamboo, berries and various plants. But he also likes to relax, lying relaxed on a tree. We take a responsible approach to our work, work conscientiously, and then rest while our products provide peace of mind and safety to others.
Red pandas are results-oriented. They go in search of juicy bamboo and will not rest until they find a tasty stick or fruit treat. We also work for results – our team is passionately committed to our work, and we also make the work process no less exciting than the result.
Red pandas are very empathetic animals. Openness, friendliness, and environmentally friendly relationships within the team and with our customers are one of Cyberprotect’s priorities. We treat ourselves, colleagues, partners and customers with care, build productive communications, our technical support engineers are always happy to help and answer any question. The friendly and intuitive interface of our solutions allows you to quickly implement them in any company.
The red panda is a curious animal. She learns new things quickly. Our team is constantly developing and getting acquainted with new technologies. We don’t miss useful conferences, we study and are happy to apply new knowledge and skills in practice.

The red panda is so adorable that we love it. We hope you like it too!

The mascot is designed to solve many diverse problems, including conveying the values of the brand and helping to increase its awareness. To help our customers, he is well versed in all Cyberprotect products and in some places is even ready to replace our technical support engineers.

Nothing exists in a vacuum: how we came up with the biography and character of our mascot

“Having created a new Universe, I got a little bored,” or rather, having received the rendered visuals, we exhaled a little, the work was almost finished, but we had to fill the image with meaning, give the character individual characteristics, make him more alive and closer to our target audience. We decided that Max was not just a mascot existing somewhere in a vacuum, but our new colleague. On the day of registration, we add new employees to our internal portal: we did the same with Max, adding his photo, contacts (yup, we even created a corporate email for him). In addition, each of our new employees sends HR a short story about themselves, their past experiences and hobbies. We did the same with our mascot, presenting it in our weekly digest among other colleagues:

As for the character of the mascot, we approached the choice of specific traits rationally and decided to endow Max with those qualities that reflect the spirit and values of our company. We took the results of an employee satisfaction survey for 2023: in one of the questions, colleagues were asked to describe Cyberprotect with several adjectives. By the way, this is approximately how we approach the definition of Tone of Voice (ToV) of a brand. Promising, friendly and reliable are some of the most popular adjectives according to the survey results. Colleagues also believe that our mascot is smart, energetic, inquisitive, empathetic and brave.

Where and, most importantly, how soon will we be able to see our red panda in action?

We have already released sticker pack on Telegram, and in addition, Max will certainly accompany our colleagues to several regional conferences this fall.

Our employees, in turn, have already managed to meet their new colleague on the pages of the corporate digest; moreover, they were the ones who helped us with naming. We initiated and held a competition in which we asked people to collectively choose a name for the panda. Over the course of a week, we received a record number of responses and ideas: our HR, the managers of the corporate portal, barely had time to process comments, enter information into the table and rank the most popular ideas. As a result, the name Max received the most votes, and the most active and creative participants received pleasant gifts.

Our new employee (and this is how we decided to position the mascot) will not only have a name, but also a personal page on the corporate portal, where he will be able to interact with colleagues, receive achievements, send postcards and even indicate planned vacation dates.

Of course, we won’t forget about merch and stickers, as well as soft toys that our employees’ children already play with. The mascot will certainly become a frequent visitor to our social networks: we have already asked our SMM manager to take a day off for one day and hand over the channels to our red panda, so that she doesn’t do anything wrong. In general, subscribe to our social networks to stay informed and not miss anything.