MSA CX: Mascot, Poster,
Infographic...
A few months ago, the MSA Global Customer Service Department requested the
creation of a mascot logo. Since then, the CX Department has seen a significant uptick
in engagement. The CX Mascot is a friendly, smart, and hard-working English Pointer Dog who sports an MSA harness and helmet along with a cartoonized version of the CX Department's other official logo. His qualities reflect the CX Department's dedication
to the tenets of good customer service: kindness, respect, intelligence, agility, and perseverance. He makes appearances on Newsletters, TV monitors, posters, and
even coloring pages!
The Mascot: Drafts
The development of the Mascot began with drafting three different overall themes/ideas. The first idea was of an animated Customer Service worker who was a hunting dog. I chose the dog to be an English Pointer because of their agility and their ability to show their owners where the prey is via pointing with their bodies. This reminded me of how CX workers show their customers the way by guiding them to the correct solution for their needs.
The second idea was of the same breed but represented as a simple, modern, geometric-style CX superhero. The third concept was an animated Customer Service Otter worker, known for his intelligence and friendliness.
The Mascots were sent out via a voting form to MSA Global CX employees where they voted for the furry friend who they felt most represented themselves and their department. It was a very close race between the Customer Service worker Dog and the CX Otter, but the CX dog (image to the left) came out on top in the end.
I also had the Global CX employees vote on the clothing they wanted their mascot to wear—the harness (top right of image below) was the most popular outfit:
Developing the Dog: finer points
I scanned a finer sketch of the CX dog, headpiece, and harness into Adobe Illustrator, traced the separate pieces, then brought them together and fine-tuned the artwork until it was review-ready.
After the review, the CX department workers who were coordinating the project decided they wanted the dog to wear an MSA helmet instead of the CX headpiece. After donning his new hard hat, the dog was finally ready to go to work...
The Final Result
Meet Freddie!
“Charis helped support our Customer Experience (CX) Department by creating a mascot to serve as a visual ambassador for our organization’s internal communications. She ensured the mascot connected with our intended audience by tying our CX logo to our company’s identity (safety products). Her creativity was superb! She made the mascot unique through the use of color, shapes, and expressions to give our mascot personality; to our department, it wasn’t just about the look and feel, but engaging our audience and allowing them to connect the mascot with CX. Charis’ support and creativity definitely worked hand-in-hand, resulting in a strong and effective symbol. The mascot fit our brand and CX vision and stood out from what we normally do.
...I would say (human engagement with the brand) is definitely up around 95% since people are seeing it more and more....and are now asking more questions and are getting more involved with how they can impact CX. ...I so appreciate all the help (Charis has) given us with this!!”
- Kristin Gamon, MSA employee
Applications
The CX Dog appears here on the Customer Service WOW Awards poster and TV infographic. These infographics were created to help employees understand both what the WOW Awards are and how to nominate coworkers. It also provides easy access to the nomination page.
Since a lot of information needed to fit on these and still be legible from a distance, I decided to use a hexagonal pattern to organize the step-by-step information and sections in a way that was easy to follow, visually interesting, and utilized the available space in an organized way. Translations were made to German, French, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, and Mandarin Chinese.
Lately, the CX Dog Mascot was transformed into a coloring page as part of the MSA CX Day celebrations. To the right is the logo I turned into a coloring and imagination-friendly outline.
The coloring page was attached to MSA's CX Day email. From there, people could print him out and either color him themselves or give him to their children to color to their hearts' content. With his friendly face, how could anybody not love the good boy? Woof!