Cute and Marketing: Branding with Awww

We’ve discussed humor and marketing and how to do it right to prompt conversions. Today we’re diving into the counterpart, which is cute and marketing.

Join us as we learn why cuteness is effective in marketing and how to do it right to strengthen your branding.

Why Cute Sells?

What was your first reaction when you looked at the photo above? The mere fact that you may have thought that you wanted to cuddle it, pinch it, or do something to whatever is in the image is an attribute to why cuteness sells.

Did you know that innately, humans are biologically programmed to protect anything cute? As a business, riding on that fact will help you turn onlookers into patrons by adding cuteness to your branding scheme.

In a study in 2011 by Bellfield, Bimont, Blom, Dommeyer, Gardiner, Mathenia, and Soto entitled, The Effect of a Cute Stimulus on Personally-Initiated, Self-Administered Surveys, they experimented on the responses of people to a survey after looking at a cute animal and baby.

The results showed that a cute baby had 88% more responses, and a cute animal had 42% more answers. Now apply those statistics to your marketing scheme.

Add a cute element to your social media posts, advertisements, and website design to increase conversion and engagement for your business. Cute sells because our inner wiring wants to nurture and protect anything cute.

In a way, cuteness becomes a catalyst to positively impact your market, which you can pair with emotional design to strengthen your brand and its visibility online.

Aside from that, cute is also deep-seated in our culture. Take a look at Japan and Korea.

Both countries sell the cute aesthetic through cartoon characters like Hello Kitty or anime and manga Japan. In Korea, K-Pop dances incorporate hand gestures in dances and eye-popping colors for clothes and hair associated with cuteness.

But how do you do it right? Get to know the types and misconceptions, and learn the tips to add Cute to your Marketing.

Common Misconceptions of Brands and Cuteness

Of course, it could be a hit or miss when discussing incorporating a particular theme into your marketing. We strive for the former to stay relevant and reach a wider audience.

With cuteness, you can make it the central marketing theme, but it begs the question of does it fit.

We’re here to answer that with some common misconceptions about incorporating cuteness into your marketing. Learning them teaches you how to avoid and better your approach.

After researching for common mistakes, brands could make when trying to brand themselves as cute. We found three.

Timing is Everything

Like our prior content on Humor and Marketing, it’s not good to always have cute in all aspects of your brand, especially when it’s not your focus. You could lose your brand identity by focusing on becoming cute instead of using cuteness to get you noticed.

Let’s say you’re a coffee brand, and your goal is to get farmers and local coffee noticed through your roastery. And if you use cuteness in all your posts, how will you get that point across?

A better way to incorporate cuteness would be an occasional post like Love Your Pet Day for cute pets. Or if you want to cater to the moms who need to stay up taking care of the kids and need their daily dose of coffee, you can have a baby inviting their mom to drink coffee to help them stay up and take care of them.

Timing is everything. When you add cuteness to elements of your branding idea, ensure it’ll hit at the right time to provide the best conversion results.

Choose Your Medium Wisely

The next misconception is adding cute to your accounts. That goes for packaging design, label design, advertisement design, and social media posts on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and more.

If your brand were a pastry shop that thrives in cute custom sweets, that’d be great, but if you’re a jewelry shop that brands itself as luxurious, an everyday post of cuteness would be seen as weird and may have a different effect than you want.

Sometimes cuteness won’t work when it doesn’t reach their intended audience. So where do you post? Where will your patrons most likely see your new product release or event?

The answer could vary, but you need to think about that. Show off your cute through advertisements and social media posts like TikTok Videos, Instagram Reels, and YouTube shorts.

Those three above are one of the most seen mediums, especially since the allure of short videos your could watch for days is irresistible. They’re suggestions, but ensuring that your cute posting is seen through the medium that works for you is the best way to get brand recognition.

Beware the Stereotypes

Lastly, since we’re talking about all things cute, sometimes, we try to market the appealing products and services we have through stereotypes. And we’re here to tell you that this warning is for all types, not just cuteness (it’s the most susceptible one, that’s why this bullet is emphasized).

Take the Huggies advertisement from 2004, “dad test.” It was insensitive and taken down due to the stereotype that dads can’t handle parenting duties as well as moms, which is wrong.

But if you try to use stereotypes, there are positive ones according to social psychology, but still, beware since you don’t know who you’d be stepping on despite your good intentions to sell your products and services.

Moving forward, let’s look at the types of cuteness than the tips to help you incorporate cuteness into any niche branding.

Types of Cuteness

There are only two types of cuteness, if you can believe it. One pertains to living organisms, while the other refers to objects.

Guess which is which before reading below.

Whimsical Cuteness

Refers to inanimate objects, like everyday items, that incorporate a cute aesthetic. It could be the label of your shampoo or a cat paw coaster for your mugs.

Whimsical cuteness is based on baby cuteness but applies to everyday items. The underlying emotions paired with this type of cuteness are fun and indulgence.

You want people to buy your items because they’re cute but because they can use them to enrich their lives. That’s how this type of cute works.

Baby Cuteness

The second one is the biological need to protect cuteness. That’s where baby cuteness comes in and takes over your marketing scheme.

The term kindchenschema was coined by Ethologist Konrad Lorenz. It’s the common characteristic of babies to have a large head, round face, and big eyes.

Our innate desire to protect and cherish activates when we see such features. Whether it’s an illustration, icon, or image, if it has a large head, round face, and huge doe eyes, you’ve got baby cuteness in your marketing.

Tips to Do Cute and Marketing

We’ve discussed why cuteness sells, the common misconceptions, and the types. Let’s understand how you can better brand with tips to incorporate cuteness into your marketing.

There are seven methods to help you combine just the right amount of cuteness with helping you get on the map.

Soft Color Palettes

Marketing to Engage, not Tell

Adaptive Strategy

Cuteness and Brand Consistency

Think about Co-Marketing

Experimenting Isn’t As Bad

Utilize your Social Media Platforms

1. Soft Color Palettes

First on the list is your choice of color palette for your overall business. This part is at the top of the list because each color you choose has a corresponding meaning.

It’s called Color Psychology, and to brand yourself as cute, you need a soft color palette. The best option would be a muted color palette.

They’re softer and less saturated among all the choices from the color wheel. Don’t forget to mix and match, whether it’s three colors together (Gradients) or two to three colors mixed as accents and primary colors.

But the most common is the colors pink, yellow, and blue because of their cool and fun effect on on-lookers.

2. Marketing to Engage, not Tell

Next is the marketing scheme that engages your audience rather than telling your customers why they should support you.

Cute helps in this department because of baby cuteness. Once people see a post with a large head, round face, and big eyes, endearingness comes, prompting them to check your brand further.

In this sense, advertisements and call-to-action text with cute font style allow you to hook your audience and encourage them to check you out.

3. Adaptive Strategy

As we stated earlier, there are various niches out there, and your brand isn’t necessarily focused on branding yourself as cute.

Cuteness is a means to grab the attention of your market, so you need to incorporate it from time to time, prompting you to create an adaptive strategy.

It could be a monthly post incorporating a cute element like a cute animal or baby, or your website design could have a cute drop-down menu. Either way, create a strategy that gradually changes with what and where you need to add cuteness.

4. Cuteness and Brand Consistency

Another repeated theme on this blog is that cuteness is a means and not a focus of your marketing strategy. When you add a cute element, ensure that it’s consistent with your brand because you increase your brand’s revenue by 23% when you’re consistent.

Why? Because it takes 5 to 7 impressions before a customer recognizes your brand. Use cuteness as a gateway to hook the attention of your desired market.

5. Think about Co-Marketing

Great minds think alike, a common notion, but it’s true, especially when you add cuteness to your marketing. You attract other businesses similar to yours, and your help each other market the other and gain the attention it deserves.

6. Experimenting Isn’t As Bad

Incorporate cute into various aspects of your brand, including logo design or email signature. Try to see where people would notice your efforts to be cute.

Try an omnichannel approach and see where your cute post would gain more traction, and work on that channel to reach your target better. Then try to create various posts like Facebook posts or LinkedIn posts to see which works best and incorporate cute in them to see better results.

7. Utilize your Social Media Platforms

Lastly, like the last suggestion above, manage all social media in one place to reach your audience that appreciates the cute aesthetic. Know when are the appropriate times to post and post your cute product launch today.

Market Better with Cuteness!

There you have it! Our guide to help you market with cuteness. Like humor, it’s up there to reach the desired visibility you want your business to have online.

Cuteness sells not just because of the aesthetic but the physical effects it has on the viewers. It’s often positive and helps you create a connection with your target market. Let us help you create a cute design.

You can hire a freelancer from DesignCrowd or visit our sister page, BrandCrowd. We have many templates you can customize and use for your business’s brand kit, like business cards, videos, invoices, and more.

Market better with cuteness by your side and connect with your market today!