As a child one of my most enduring memories is of watching Ramlila with my parents at ‘Thakurdwara', a small town on the outskirts of what is today known as ‘Uttaranchal'. On one such outing, after the evening's episode was over I saw the guys playing Ravana (the demon king) and Laxman (Lord Ram's brother) surrounded by an excited crowd. On a closer look it turned out that the duo were promoting a branded hair oil attired in full costume, even using their stage voices. For days after, I heard kids (and adults) refer to the brand as the ‘Ravan wala tel' or ‘Laxman wala tel'.

Characters, brand mascots and other such animals

Price Waterhouse forecasts the total value of comic characters to reach $ 1.3 trillion, of which 70% could be Asian.

As a consumer, the utterly butterly girl of Amul and the maharaja of Air India have not only informed and entertained me but also helped me connect and build a context for these brands beyond what ‘laxman' did for the hair oil. These characters offer the brands an opportunity to tell a story that is human, dynamic and local. They locate the brand in the world inhabited by me (the consumer) and reflect my conflicts, aspirations and moods.

Recent examples include Chintamani (ICICI), Insurance man (Bajaj Allianz) and Amaron batteries. The concept of a branded character is no longer novel.

2008 a media odyssey

In the world of Web 2.0, social networking media, internet on the go and multimedia mobile phones, creating a character does not stop at a drawing or a puppet that appears on the packaging or in a TV commercial.

So what is the definition of a well rounded/fleshed out brand mascot? What kind of content do customers expect from these mascots? How can they be made into containers of a brand's attributes? Is there life for these mascots beyond the 30 second commercial or viral video? How do we make consumers in a culturally diverse country like India connect with an icon? And most importantly how do we do this in a cost-effective manner with metrics available to the brand managers to measure impact?

Moreover, the Indian consumer has come a long way from media naive to almost being media fatigued. Instant news and the explosion of media vehicles has made discovery and consumption of content a nightmare for advertisers, creators as well as consumers of content.

Is that a bird? Is that a plane? No..it's ..a Pokkitbuddy

Inspite of its diverse culture-scape the one thing that's common pretty much across India is the usage of visuals and symbols to communicate. Add to this the colourful festivals and millions of stories, folktales, folksongs and myths across the country and what you have is a well established culture of storytelling and storyselling. The solution to the problems of the 21^st century media scape lies in tapping some of these habits and methods.

Imagine being able to navigate the content space with the aid of a visual symbol, a character – that stands for a specific content vertical and is easily identifiable. A sort of container of attributes that consumers associate with certain types of content. An interactive pneumonic that customises the experience and aggregates diverse info-streams. new alphabet for a new vocabulary. A visual alphabet.