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Why brand characters beat celebrities in ads (what 2,015 tested video ads show)

Published · Updated · 6 min read · By the Productoons team

The short answer: a celebrity lends your ad attention, but a character you own keeps it attached to your brand. In Ipsos’s analysis of 2,015 US video ads, ads featuring a brand character were 6.01 times more likely to land in the top group than the bottom group on branded attention. For celebrities used consistently across campaigns the figure was 2.84 times, and one-off celebrity use did worse still (Ipsos, “The Power of You”). Other research points the same way. For a small brand that’s good news: a character is something you can actually own.

What Ipsos actually tested

Ipsos took 2,015 video ads from its US pre-launch testing database, a fairly even mix of 15- and 30-second spots across ten categories including healthcare, pet food and durables. People saw the ads in a distracted, cluttered setting. Later they were shown de-branded stills and asked whether they remembered the ad and, unprompted, which brand it was for. That is “branded attention”: did the ad get noticed, and did people link it to the right brand?

Ipsos then checked which brand assets showed up more often in the best-performing ads than in the worst. Among visual assets, characters came first by a wide margin:

  • Characters: 6.01x
  • Celebrities (used consistently): 2.84x
  • Package shape: 2.09x

Its explanation is the part worth remembering. A celebrity is “not controlled as such by the brand”, and often turns up in ads for several brands at once, which risks attention going “more on the celebrity than the brand.” A branded character, Ipsos writes, does “not represent multiple brands, unless you want them to,” and can evolve with your story.

The caveats: the measure is branded attention in a pre-test, not sales. And “characters” here means any owned brand character, not only animated ones (KFC’s Colonel Sanders is Ipsos’s own example). This is strong evidence that characters get remembered and correctly attributed. It is not proof that a cartoon will double your conversion rate.

Other research points the same way

System1, which scores ads with consumer panels, keeps finding the same pattern:

  • Super Bowl ads: across four years of Super Bowl testing, “brand characters consistently outperformed celebrity spots.” Ads with recurring characters and other “fluent devices” averaged 3.8 Stars against 2.7 for celebrity ads, on a 5.9-Star scale, and 88% of viewers remembered the brand versus 83% for ads without them (Advertising Week / System1). These are panel scores that predict effectiveness, not in-market results.
  • US insurance: ads with a recognisable brand character or recurring scenario scored 2.4 Stars versus 1.9, with brand recognition at 92% versus 86%. One GEICO Gecko ad scored 3.8 Stars against a category average of 2.4, and 96% of viewers named the right brand (System1, April 2025). Same caveat: pre-test scores, not sales.
  • Business results: in an analysis of IPA Effectiveness Awards cases, System1 found campaigns with a fluent device such as a recurring character were 37% more likely to increase market share and 30% more likely to increase profit gains (LBB Online, 2019). Award entries are a self-selected sample, so treat this as a strong signal, not a controlled experiment.

Why a character beats borrowed fame

Three reasons come up again and again in this research.

  1. It points back to you. A famous face reminds people of the famous person. A character only exists in your ads, so every time people recognise it, they recognise your brand.
  2. It compounds. The System1 results are about recurring characters. Each new ad builds on the last instead of starting from zero. Even with celebrities, Ipsos found consistent use beat one-off appearances. Repetition is doing a lot of the work.
  3. It’s yours to keep. A spokesperson can move on, raise their rate, or end up in a headline you didn’t want. A character stays on brand because you decide what it does.

There’s also an academic finding that matters for newer brands. Garretson and Niedrich (Journal of Advertising, 2004) found spokes-character features lead to “more favorable brand attitudes for consumers with less brand experience,” with little effect on people who already knew the brand well (DOI). If most people seeing your ad have never heard of you, that is exactly the audience a character helps most.

Where this doesn’t hold

Let’s be honest about the limits.

  • Branded attention is not purchase. A study of animated spokes-characters found they “enhance brand impression” but “purchase intention is not guaranteed” (Huang et al., 2011, DOI). The character gets you noticed. The product, the offer and the proof still have to sell.
  • Human creators still win some benchmarks. TikTok’s own analysis found creator ads drive a 70% higher click-through rate and 159% higher engagement rate than non-creator ads at the same CPM (TikTok, “The Creator Advantage”). TikTok sells creator partnerships, so read it with that in mind, but it’s a fair warning: on TikTok, a good human creator is the bar to beat.
  • Serious categories can push back. In an FDA study of prescription-drug TV ads, animated versions produced more negative attitudes than live-action ones (FDA). For medical or high-trust products, a goofy character can feel wrong.

So the claim isn’t “cartoons beat everything.” It’s narrower and more useful: a recurring character you own is one of the strongest brand assets there is, and it is far more within a small brand’s reach than a celebrity. We weighed the creator side in more detail in cartoon vs. UGC product videos. The sensible plan is to run both and let your numbers decide.

How to build a character for your product

You don’t need a mascot department. In most of the examples above, the character is simply the product or something close to it. Here’s how to make one that works.

  • Make the product the character. A face on the bottle, the candle or the box means every second of character screen time is also product screen time.
  • Give it one clear personality trait. Grumpy, smug, overprotective, dramatic. One trait people can sum up in a word is easier to remember than a full backstory.
  • Tie the trait to the benefit. A candle that won’t stop talking about smells is selling scent. A coffee bag that’s grumpy until you open it is selling the morning fix.
  • Hook in the first two seconds. TikTok’s research on hooks found that showing a person early helps, so your character’s face has to do that job right away. Our 3-second hook guide covers how.
  • Keep it consistent. Same look, same voice, same catchphrase in every video. Consistency is what turns an ad into an asset.
  • Stay label-true. Being playful doesn’t change your product’s claims. The character can be cheeky, but what it says about the product has to match the packaging.

Here the candle is the spokesperson:

Example in our Talking Product style. WICKSTER is a fictional demo brand.

The takeaway for e-commerce sellers

Big brands pay heavily for borrowed fame and still get beaten by characters they invented. You can skip the first step. Pick one character, ideally your product itself, give it a personality that sells the benefit, and bring it back in every video. Each ad then builds recognition for the next one instead of starting from scratch. Test it against your best creator video, keep whichever wins on your own numbers, and keep the character going.

That’s the kind of video we make at Productoons: your real product, turned into a cartoon character that talks, jokes and sells, delivered within 24 hours of your brief. See how it works for the process.

Want a video like this for YOUR product? See the options and order on our pricing page. And follow @productoons.co on Instagram for new examples.