Meet Lance

The healthcare company wanted to relate to their newly diagnosed consumers. Through our research we learned characters entertain us, educate us, and can even surprise us. They can add humor, connect with a hard-to-reach audience, or take on the competition.

You might argue that characters don’t work in certain industries. But 30 years ago, who would have guessed that major insurance companies would now have talking geckos and ducks yelling “Aflac!” to market them? Insurance companies like Geico, Progressive, and Allstate have explored numerous character approaches to stand out in an industry where products can come off as commodities.

But how do you even start to create a character, when there are so many possibilities? The most important place to start is to establish the intent of your character so you have an end goal and ultimate purpose for the character. With that goal in mind, you can design a character that can achieve it.

Consumers will be introduced to Meet Lance visually. That puts a lot of pressure on the design to be unique and recognizable, while also communicating tone and personality. Despite this challenge, designing the Meet Lance character was the most the fun part of the process!

Unrestrained by physical limits, the Meet Lance characters can look any way we decided. We first determined what kind of character best represents the Meet Lance. Should they be a human, an animal, or something more conceptual?

We had to keep in mind the taste of our target audience in mind. The shape, proportion, and style of your character had to correspond to those tastes. There are numerous best practices here: round shapes are often associated with kindness, masculine characters are accepted as powerful and strong, big eyes convey honesty and cuteness, etc.f

And when it comes to color, we use colors that are consistent with the brand and unique red and blue accent colors.

This marketing initiative was so successful, that we expanded the Meet Lance campaign into marketing collateral, sell sheets, literature, digital and video.