What makes familiar faces such a great investment?
In March 2026, we used Virtual Audiences to explore one of the most debated questions in brand strategy: is investing in a recurring advertising character worth it? The answer, backed by the research, is a resounding yes.
Virtual Audiences is a research tool that lets you run studies at speed, then using AI personas allows you to simulate how different audience segments think, feel, and respond. Rather than waiting weeks for traditional research, we can interrogate a topic from multiple angles in a fraction of the time.
Few brand-building tools compound the way a recurring character does. A character done well accrues value year on year, building recognition, trust, and emotional connection that's almost impossible to manufacture any other way. Our research found that the case for characters is strongest in emotionally-driven categories — insurance, fast food, consumer goods — and weakest where people are primarily seeking information. The winning formula, consistent across the evidence, comes down to four things: congruence with brand values, long-term commitment, room to evolve, and authentic resonance with real audiences.
Take "Flo" from Progressive — not just a memorable face, but a brand asset that fosters recall and emotional connection in ways that outlast any individual campaign (1, 2, 7). Done right, a great character doesn't just represent a brand. It becomes a value multiplier across every marketing channel — and that's exactly what our Virtual Audiences research set out to prove.
One of the strongest arguments for a brand character over a celebrity endorser is exclusivity. Celebrities spread their equity across every brand they work with. A character belongs entirely to you (2). Long-running advertising characters consistently deliver higher emotional engagement and stronger brand recall than other approaches, and unlike a celebrity deal, the asset can't walk away (2).
The Harris Poll data reinforces this for the insurance category specifically, finding that fictional mascots can be more effective than celebrity spokespeople (3). The reason likely comes down to authenticity: a character is crafted to embody your brand's values with precision, and consumers sense that alignment. There's no question of divided loyalty.
Perceptions of a character transfer directly to perceptions of the brand (1, 4). Get the character right (trustworthy, relatable, congruent with the product) and those qualities attach to the brand itself. The Marlboro Man is a striking historical example: a single character successfully repositioned an entire brand's identity, shifting Marlboro away from its previous image to become, in consumers' minds, a "real man's cigarette." (6).
That transfer of perception is powerful, but it isn't uniform. Running a character concept through Virtual Audiences across multiple personas reveals which groups receive those qualities positively — and which remain unmoved or actively resistant.
Brand recall is more than just a vanity metric. Data shows that recall influences 38.7% of brand lift in emerging media channels, on par with traditional channels (2). Brands investing in memorable characters are building recall infrastructure that pays dividends across every medium they appear in.
The recall numbers across new channels are striking:
• Podcast advertising delivers a 71% aided recall rate vs. 50% for non-listeners (2)
• Influencer marketing achieves 79% aided recall (2)
• Branded content leads at 81% aided recall vs. 63% unaided recall (2)
A strong, recognizable character can be carried into all contexts — meaning the investment in character development multiplies across your entire media mix.
Unfortunately, it does take time to build a character up. Creating a successful brand character is a long-term investment, with research suggesting it takes around three years to see the real benefits (2). Consistency, year-round integration, and genuine emotional engagement are the ingredients; there are no shortcuts. For brand teams under pressure to show short-term results that's a real consideration, but equally it explains why well-established characters are so hard for competitors to replicate. Virtual Audiences can help compress some of that uncertainty early on, by identifying which personas are already predisposed to connect with a character before the three-year clock starts ticking.
Flo's impact isn't purely about consistency and duration. Her quirky, humorous personality has contributed to measurable increases in brand awareness and consideration (1). Humour creates common ground as a natural, low-friction way to build rapport, and in categories like insurance where consumer engagement is typically low, that emotional bridge is especially valuable (1).
Ronald McDonald demonstrates the same principle with a different audience: his warmth and playfulness build emotional connection with children and families, reinforcing McDonald's brand image without ever making a hard sell (6). The character handles the relational work which frees up other advertising to focus on product. This division of labor is one of the underappreciated efficiencies of a strong mascot strategy.
What Virtual Audiences adds here is persona-specificity. Humour is one of the most audience-dependent tools in advertising — a tone that creates rapport with one segment can feel patronising or out of touch to another. Testing a character's comedic register across distinct personas shows where the laughs land, and where they don't, before those choices are locked in.
For creatives developing a brand character, the single most important design consideration is congruence. Consumers trust brands more when the character aligns naturally with what the product is and does (4). Allstate's Mayhem is a compelling example: rather than telling consumers that bad things happen and insurance matters, the character is the bad thing — a personification of the very risk Allstate exists to cover (3). The character doesn't just represent the brand; it demonstrates the need for it.
Product involvement is a meaningful variable here. Character-driven advertising tends to work best for low-involvement categories — everyday purchases where emotional connection and memorability are the key drivers. For high-involvement products, where consumers are doing more deliberate evaluation, clear information may outperform character-led campaigns (4). Understanding where your product sits on that spectrum should shape how heavily you lean on character versus substance.
Congruence, importantly, is in the eye of the audience — and it doesn't always read the same way across personas. A character that feels like an obviously natural fit for one segment may strike another as forced or irrelevant. Virtual Audiences makes that divergence visible at the design stage, when there's still room to course-correct, rather than after launch when the feedback arrives as sales data.
The biggest risk for any long-running character isn't irrelevance, it's stagnation. Familiarity generally enhances brand trust, likability, and recall, but overexposure can erode some of those gains (1, 2). The brands that sustain character-driven campaigns understand that consistency and freshness aren't opposites; they are partners.
Flo's campaign is instructive here. What began as a simple "superstore" concept evolved into something more like an ongoing sitcom, with the character at its center (5). The persona stayed consistent while the situations around her kept moving. The balance of a stable character with an evolving narrative is what prevents a mascot from calcifying into something consumers tune out.
Consumer preferences are also shifting in ways that matter when considering character strategy. Research spanning 66 years of U.S. advertising data shows meaningful change in expectations around diversity and representation (1). Brands investing in character development today need to account for this — not as a box-ticking exercise, but as a genuine strategic consideration. Characters that reflect the audience they're speaking to build stronger, more durable connections (1, 2).
A well-designed recurring character is one of the most durable assets a brand can build, but it requires genuine commitment. Not every brand needs one; the case is strongest in categories where emotional connection drives purchase decisions, and weakest where consumers are primarily seeking information (7). The tech sector has largely moved away from mascots, but insurance, fast food, and other consumer categories continue to find real value in them (7).
For those who do invest, the formula is consistent across the evidence: design for congruence, plan for the long term, build in room to evolve, and treat authenticity as non-negotiable. Characters that earn trust do so by genuinely reflecting brand values and resonating with real audiences — not by being loudest, or most visible, or most familiar.
Virtual Audiences doesn't change that formula — but it makes executing it substantially less risky. By validating character concepts across distinct personas from the outset, and tracking resonance over time as audiences evolve, brand teams can make faster, sharper decisions at every stage of a character's life: from initial concept through to refresh and beyond.
Done right, a great character doesn't just represent a brand. It becomes a value multiplier across every marketing channel.
For a closer look at how Virtual Audiences can help brands to monitor audience perceptions and pressure test scenarios, book a demo here.
Each post in #AIonPoint: Market Insights for Brands explores the trends and consumer behaviors shaping your industry. From retail and CPG to tech, we’re uncovering what truly drives markets, all powered by our synthetic data solution that’s fast, accurate, and always on point. Stay tuned for more insights and trends as Yabble AI decodes consumer behavior, helping brands thrive in an ever-changing landscape.
References:
1. Forbes — forbes.com
2. System1 Group — system1group.com / Nielsen — nielsen.com
3. The Harris Poll — theharrispoll.com
4. Emerald Publishing — emerald.com
5. Fast Company — fastcompany.com
6. eReleases — ereleases.com
7. CMSWire — cmswire.com
8. PNAS — pnas.org
9. GlobalEdge / MSU — globaledge.msu.edu