It’s Never Too Late to Build a Brand Character
The festive ad season is in full swing, and that means the familiar faces are back. Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot, Argos’s Connie & Trevor, and M&S’s Fairy are lighting up screens once again. Soon we’ll see pink flamingos and that lovable Moonpig return, while in the US, even the Planters Nut is opening the doors to the holidays.
As the years roll by, more brands are embracing the power of character. Barbour continues its successful collaboration with Aardman, bringing Shaun the Sheep and Wallace & Gromit into their Christmas storytelling, while Sainsbury’s has enlisted the BFG to deliver some BIG FESTIVE GOODNESS to UK households.
These characters aren’t just cute or quirky; they consistently dominate emotional engagement and brand recall. In our early read of 2025’s festive leaders, four of the top ten ads feature owned brand characters, two borrow iconic IPs, and another two revive classic campaigns. The result is a clear shift toward consistency and character longevity, with early airers already averaging an impressive 4.6-Star rating on System1’s Competitive Edge database.
Among this year’s standouts, Kevin the Carrot celebrates his 10-year anniversary, marking a decade of loveable storytelling with the highest 10s Star Rating ever recorded on our database. That’s a masterclass in how a simple idea, executed with care and consistency, can evolve into a national treasure.
But for many brands watching from the sidelines, that success can feel daunting. Questions often arise:
- Are characters a safe bet in today’s fast-moving media landscape?
- How long does it take for a character to deliver meaningful return?
Let’s unpack those questions.
Are Characters a Safe Bet?
Across TV, social, and outdoor, our data consistently shows that characters are powerful drivers of both attention and engagement. The work of Orlando Wood, in his books Lemon and Look out, draws on extensive IPA business data to demonstrate that brand characters deliver larger and longer-term business effects than celebrity endorsements.
Why is that? The answer is simple: characters are ownable. They exist purely to serve your brand and are free from personal motivations or off-screen reputations. Kevin the Carrot will not end up in a headline scandal unless Aldi and McCann Manchester decide he should.
Celebrities, by contrast, are famous in their own right and often appear across multiple brands. Think about how many David Beckham ads come to mind in completely different sectors. Search his name in our Test Your Ad Competitive Edge database, powered by System1 Ai, and you will see a catalogue of work from a wide range of advertisers, all featuring the same familiar face. Every time that happens, the emotional equity you have invested in is shared. With a brand character, every ounce of emotion, humour and storytelling is attributed directly and exclusively to your brand.
So, ask yourself: if Taylor Swift fronts your new beauty range, is she driving product sales or concert ticket sales? And when the M&Ms spokescandies appear on your screen, who do you think of first? Exactly. Brand characters keep every bit of attention and affection in-house.
And this is not just true for TV. In our collaborative work with TikTok titled The Long and the Short (Form) of It, we found that fluent brand characters rank among the top drivers of attention and brand fluency on social platforms. Whether it is a 30-second TV spot or a 6-second vertical ad, a consistent character can stop thumbs, spark smiles, and strengthen brand memory faster than almost anything else.
But don’t just take our word for it. In 2023, retailer Very launched a new brand platform, “Let’s Make it Sparkle,” featuring a flock of fabulous pink flamingos. Inspired by Orlando Wood’s work in Look out, the brand set out to build a distinctive, consistent platform that would cut through the sea of sameness dominating retail advertising. They wanted vibrancy, memorability, and above all, character.
A year on, the results speak for themselves. Very’s Christmas campaign not only scored highly on System1’s Test Your Ad platform, landing in the top 12 festive ads of 2024, but also delivered real business growth in their golden quarter. Retail sales rose 2.3% year-on-year, while cost efficiency for driving recall improved by 15% by Year 2.
To put that in context, the British Retail Consortium Retail Sales Monitor reported overall market growth of just 0.5% during the same period. Very outperformed the market more than fourfold, maintaining strong results in toys, gifts, and beauty, while driving new growth in home, fashion, and sports.
That is real, visible impact. In fact, it makes not having a brand character feel like the risky option.
For the full case study, read it here.
How Long Until Characters Deliver ROI?
Like all good things, brand characters take time to deliver their full value. It is also worth clarifying that they are not reserved for the festive period. While Christmas is the moment many returning characters reappear, such as the Energizer Bunny, Planters’ Mr. Peanut and Target’s Bullseye in the US, there is no reason they should retreat to the North Pole once January arrives. In recent years, brands like Aldi and Very have shown what year-round character integration can achieve. Kevin the Carrot appeared during the Olympics, and Very’s flamingos continued to shine on social, delivering an impressive 5 Star Rating. These are further proof points of just how effective characters can be across the wider marketing mix.
However, success is not instant. When Kevin first appeared on screens, he delivered a strong yet comparatively modest 3 Star Rating. Ten years later, Aldi consistently tops the Christmas charts with 5.9 Star Ratings for long-term impact, outstanding short-term spike results and exceptional fluency. This is what long-term investment looks like in practice.
Investing in a brand character is a bit like running. You simply have to set off. Except, unlike running, you need to keep going for around three years before you begin to feel the real benefits. Whether you are building a character, a jingle or a distinctive line such as “Have a Break” or Yorkshire Tea’s “Done Proper”, fluent devices need time to become familiar, to embed themselves in memory and to reduce cognitive load. It does not happen overnight. It takes investment, repetition and a commitment to consistency.
For anyone who feels it may be too late to create a fluent device, or who fears the first iteration might not land perfectly, look to Boots. The brand has long delivered strong creative and regularly appears near the top of festive and year-round performance tables. But Boots did not always have a single unifying character or device that tied all its advertising together across touchpoints. That has now changed.
In 2025, Boots used Christmas as the moment to launch a new brand character, “Puss in Boots”. It is clever wordplay, it fits the brand naturally, it carries cultural relevance with a light nod to Shrek and it is instantly endearing. Audiences clearly felt the same. This first outing achieved a 5.2 Star Rating for long-term potential, an exceptional result for a debut appearance. It is exciting to imagine where this mascot will be after another two years of consistent use.
With brand characters, the growth is visible year after year. It is never too late to start. But if you already have a character in your marketing toolkit, for goodness’ sake, do not retire them in search of something new. The greatest returns come from staying the course
Create with Confidence
System1’s Test Your Ad platform enables you to test, refine and maximise the impact of your creativity. Whether you are launching a new character, refreshing a tagline, trialling a jingle or exploring an entirely new creative concept, testing removes the guesswork and gives you the confidence to move forward or go in another direction. With real consumer emotional responses captured second by second and frame by frame, you can see exactly how audiences will react before you go to market.
Our Expert Guidance team is on hand throughout the entire creative process, helping you interpret the metrics, understand the story behind the data and make decisions that drive stronger commercial returns.
If you are ready to unlock more effective, more emotionally engaging work, get in touch with the team today.