Trying to personify your brand? Consider a puppet

A regular day for a brand manager might involve pulling strings to orchestrate a perfect image for consumers.

These days, it could also involve pulling literal strings—of a puppet, that is.

Companies like Liberty Mutual, General Mills, and Pinterest have in recent years employed puppet characters to embody brand messaging and star in campaigns. The puppets’ exact characterizations can range from ongoing roles in a brand universe, as in the case of Liberty Mutual’s new fuzzy yellow blob Liberty Biberty, to one-off appearances that personify products the brand wants to emphasize, like Pinterest’s talking cabbage puppet promoting its Pinterest Predicts report or General Mills’s use of puppet versions of Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry on limited-edition boxes of Monster Cereals.

As brands embrace the fun of felt and googly eyes, pop culture is shining a spotlight on puppetry, too. Bob Baker’s Marionette Theater enjoyed a massive moment in April with a puppeteered rendition of Ben Platt’s cover of Addison Rae’s “Diet Pepsi” at Coachella, while Rocky, the puppeteered alien character in this year’s blockbuster Project Hail Mary, took on another life when videos featuring its puppeteer and behind-the-scenes breakdowns of its creation grew popular on social media. Most recently, as part of the star-studded FIFA World Cup final halftime show, some of the Muppets took to the pitch to participate in a cover of “Seven Nation Army.”

Whatever form a puppet may take, anthropomorphization seems to be a trend with legs…and arms, or potentially no limbs at all, depending on the puppet in question. Dayna Castillo, marketing strategist and founder of the marketing and digital culture newsletter Silence, Brand!, said puppets are perfectly poised to become brand representatives amid a renewed interest in the art form.

“It’s time for puppets to shine,” Castillo told us.

Face of the brand

After several years in which brand mascots occupied the social spotlight, Castillo said puppets are a natural evolution for brands looking to personify themselves. Using a puppet can be a way to infuse a more human-like nature into a brand, while also minimizing risk.

“There’s a little bit of a crossroads where you have the mascot on one side, who can’t talk, and then you have a person who is the face of your brand, who can change at any time, who can quit the job, and the face of your brand is gone,” Castillo said. “But a puppet sits in the middle of that, where you can have this character who belongs to your brand, where a brand can have ownership of that identity and that persona, but the puppet can speak as well.”

Puppets also bring a certain sense of whimsy that can be hard to capture. Jenna Lebel, CMO, US retail markets, Liberty Mutual, told us that bringing the brand to life with a character that invokes joy, delight, and nostalgia helps the company stand out in insurance, a category that’s well-known for its roster of characters.

Plus, a physical in-house character can feature in anything from TV spots to in-person events and creator partnerships. In addition to commercials and social content in which Liberty Biberty currently stars, Lebel said the puppet’s upcoming schedule includes becoming an announcer with NBC’s Sunday Night Baseball program, with additional partnerships with ESPN, NBC, and influencers in the works.

“We’re looking at doing some creator and influencer-type of activations, and that’s really about how can we borrow equity from the relationship consumers already have with their favorite influencers and creators, and really introduce Biberty into the world,” Lebel said.

Handmade with love

Another way brand puppets can extend their time in the sun is through behind-the-scenes social content, which is becoming increasingly popular as AI’s ubiquity creates a growing appreciation for craftsmanship. With puppets, there can be plenty to spotlight, ranging from the materials used to make the puppet itself to the character’s operation.

“You can create so much content around this type of art form to prove that it is being made by a human,” Castillo said. “It’s not just the final piece of content with your puppet talking to screen, delivering your brand message.”

Liberty Mutual, which worked with its creative agency, Bandits & Friends, and Jim Henson’s Creature Shop on the character, has already used behind-the-scenes photos and videos on social media, highlighting the creature’s creation from start to finish, and Lebel said the team plans to post more.

Even if brands are using AI, showing off the process of puppetry can align the brand with audiences that feel negatively towards the technology, according to Castillo—creating another way for brands to have their cake and eat it, too.

Liberty Mutual, for example, is using AI in other parts of their content and creative development process, according to Lebel, but comments on the brand’s post breaking down how Liberty Biberty reflects the positive feelings some anti-AI consumers may feel about the approach. “The fact that Liberty Mutual went with a physical effect and not CGI or AI makes me trust them,” reads one comment.

Beyond that, creating a puppet is also a way to zig where other brands zag, according to Lebel.

“Developing Bibberty as a puppet was a strategic bet that in a tech-forward era, something real and tangible would really cut through and be genuinely memorable and resonate with consumers,” Lebel said.

The overarching digitization of daily life could also be contributing to a desire for more human-led creativity. Bob Baker’s Marionette Theater in Los Angeles, which puts on puppet shows and creates commercial puppets for brands like Braindead, Vans, and Marvel, has seen inquiries increase over the last 10 years or so, according to Winona Bechtle, the theater’s director of partnerships.

“I think Covid’s a big part of it, of people staying at home and kind of becoming more in touch with handcraft,” Bechtle told us. “We’re definitely not anti-tech, but I do think that there’s just a need and a particular interest now in handcraft. And nothing is more analog than puppetry.”