The Furry Stampede: How Softness is Suddenly Strategic.

Written by Dr. Fleur Horner – CEO TVE

Over the past few months I’ve noticed a lot of fluff in advertising and that isn’t an industry-wide dig! The cogs started whirring when I noticed British Gas plastering its blue ‘Things’ all over the tube.

I clocked them because they reminded me of the Batchelors ‘Hug’ (which as an aside now feels quite creepy when watched back – enjoy!). What, on face value could be seen as the genesis of a mascot – a distinctive brand asset with renewed media spend behind it, designed to enhance recall. Mascots are well known as being under-utilised in the same way that sound signatures often are – they don’t often win awards which means they are often overlooked. Then I realised that while ‘the Things’ have been around since last year, these little fluffy mascots have been hard launched and amplified in ATL comms ahead of the UK energy price cap rise. In this situation, I can’t help but feel that cuteness is being weaponised with a different outcome in mind than memorability. Either that or a senior British Gas exec got fomo and wanted the equivalent to Octopus Energy’s pink squishy.

Fast forward then to the past few weeks. Meta has launched its Muse agent with Jolly, a small fuzzy character, and then what feels like only moments later, OpenAI introduced Dots, colourful little characters that front its new always-on agents.

At TVE we used to joke that whatever the category, the way to land a concept with consumers was to add a kitten or a puppy. This feels like that scenario on a much bigger scale, and it says a lot about how these brands are building strategies around their own trust and sentiment issues.

Why is cute the route?

Cute characters elicit an emotional response before anyone starts judging the content. Big heads, large doe eyes and soft, round shapes are processed very quickly. Research in children has shown that these types of features light up reward regions in the brain – it’s no co-incidence that Animé and animation as a whole leans on this design language to increase character appeal. Cuteness also lowers people’s guard. When people feel good about something, they rate its risks lower and its benefits higher, the phenomenon psychologist Paul Slovic calls ‘the affect heuristic’. It follows then that if you are about to raise prices, or ask for unrestricted access to someone’s inbox and bank card, those are the two judgements that brands would most want to shift.

This is different to creating a distinctive brand asset that simply makes you more memorable such as CompareTheMarket’s meerkat, or reinforces a perception like softness; something the Andrex puppy does so well and so literally. The flurry of furry makes me think that cuteness is being strategically leveraged in a way we haven’t seen before and with the end goal of softening negative perceptions.

The blurring of lines between mascot and product

For Meta and OpenAI, the characters are more than a mascot and actually make the products feel less threatening. These agents can read your messages, fill in forms and spend money for you, their small fuzzy faces belie the power and responsibility they hold. There’s evidence from elsewhere that this type of humanisation works. One study found that giving a self-driving car a name and a voice made people trust it more, and blame it less after a crash. Make of that what you will.

A cute character can earn a brand a first look. It can’t prove that brand is competent or honest. The brands that get lasting valuable equity from these characters will consistently back them up with something people can see, such as clear controls over what an AI agent can do or practical help for customers struggling with bills. Without that, I expect the goodwill to wear off quickly and the fluff to flatten.