They've been around for decades: talking tigers and jolly green giants that have served admirably as persuasive voices for brands and products. The top five most-recognized characters include the evergreens (Tony the Tiger and Mickey Mouse), followed closely by newer entries Ronald McDonald and the Energizer Bunny.

Most consumers grew up with the characters and associate them with their brand. But mascot and character marketing experienced a period of decline in the 1980s as ad executives and brand managers sought other creative and outlandish means of promoting their brands. But the mascot is back -- and not just on cereal shelves.

Sports teams have shown the marketing world that mascots and characters are highly effective in creating awareness, building loyalty and most importantly, selling tickets. And the rest of the marketing world is taking note. The San Diego Chicken made the sports mascot big news. Other sports teams have followed suit.

The benefits are numerous to marketers that are serious about establishing personality for their brands. A strong mascot marketing effort will:

• Create media exposure and excitement,
• Generate goodwill for the brand,
• Act as an ambassador for the brand by providing a voice for the company's social conscience,
• Provide a rallying icon for community identification (for example, baseball fans doing the tomahawk chop),
• Provide tie-in identification at point-of-sale (the mascot boldly featured on packaging, in-store merchandising, trucks and T-shirts),
• and sell products.

But does a mascot or character make sense for the average small business? With the understanding that not every character has to be translated to three-dimensional form, characters can exist equally well on the printed page or on product packaging. And the character can work particularly well for a product that needs to generate an emotional response in the consumer. Characters and mascots also make sense in retail, particularly where the child is the primary target, followed closely by the parent who has to pay the bill.

If you are seriously considering the development of a character or mascot, follow this advice:

• Spend whatever it takes, within reason, to develop a professional character that is worthy of your product; don't let your character look amateurish and cheaply produced.
• Remember that you're not looking for just an entertaining character. There must be strong identification with the brand.
• Once you've got the character, use it everywhere from signage to collateral to in-store merchandising to packaging, advertising and events.
• Use the services of a professional firm to guide you through the important development phase. Character development, particularly for mascots, requires a special base of knowledge to make it work successfully. Most ad agencies and design firms don't have the complete skills set. Find an agency that does.

Alf Nucifora is a marketing consultant in Atlanta. Visit his web site at www.nucifora.com. This article originally appeared in BizJournals and has been reprinted here (with emphasis added) with the permission of the author.