- How do you pronounce SEOmoz? (It’s not SEEmoz or SUMOZE; it’s simply pronounced “S-E-Omoz.” You can find out more background on the company’s name in one of Rand’s blog posts here.)
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What’s the story behind your mascot, Roger?
Without further adieu, let’s hear it from the man himself...
Q: Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.
My name is Matthew Heilman (insert shameless plug)
and I currently reside in the perpetually damp city of Seattle (go
Sonics!). I'm currently the lead UX designer for the mobile properties
over at Nordstrom, which is actually a few blocks north of where the
main Moz office is. My number one goal at Nordstrom is to make our
customers happy by providing them with intuitive and relevant features,
with a sprinkling of fun. I guess if you really want to simplify it, you
could say that I make it easy for people to buy nice pants while
they're on the move. Prior to being at Nordstrom, I was the Creative
Director at the SEOmoz and was the mad scientist behind the creation of
Roger.
Q: What inspired you to create Roger?
I remember when I first came to SEOmoz; there was only a handful of
people in comparison to the cornucopia of folks there now! With that
said, the brand and design were also in their beginning stages. Matt
Inman had created a great start and established a consistent design
language for the company at the time, which was awesome because I didn't
inherit total craziness. One thing I personally thought that Moz didn't
have at the time was a visual voice or champion for the brand. We did
have two things going for us, though: a recognizable logo, and a CEO who
was a figurehead in the community.
I had sketched up some random ideas prior to creating Roger, one of
which was taking Rand and turning him into a cartoon character. I
ditched that direction because I felt that, as a brand, we should create
a voice that wasn't anchored by a real human and had more of a 3rd
party role. When thinking of a mascot, I wanted to create something that
was a little more fun and approachable. With Roger, I really wanted to
create was something that would almost make you feel bad when you
thought about leaving; kind of like the feeling you get when you try to
leaving your house and your puppy is crying. (But seriously, don’t leave
SEOmoz because if you do, then you make puppies cry.) Really what came
about was a lovable-looking robot that really made you feel good about
the decision you made to be a part of the SEOmoz community.
Q: Where did you get the name Roger?
Honestly, I would love to tell you that it came to me in a dream while
I was on a long trek across Tibet, but that one was all Scott
Willoughby. Scott was SEOmoz's Director of Conversion and Retention
Marketing during the time that I was working on Roger. He was integral
about backing the idea of having a cartoon robot play a role in the
brand, and he also had some really stellar ideas about what we could do.
I remember brainstorming ideas at the time, and Scott’s suggestion of
Roger just seemed to make sense. It really fit the whole lovable robot
idea perfectly, in my opinion.
Q: Why a robot and not a camelopard (Google it!)?
Because a camelopard only has +10 stealth and is susceptible to magic
attacks, and everyone knows a robot is impervious to magic attacks.
Actually, a camelopard sounds pretty sweet. Maybe you guys can add a
little antagonist into the mix and make it a camelopard?
In all reality, during the time I was kicking around ideas, the robot
just seemed like a good fit with the industry. Something mechanical and a
little more sci-fi was more of a natural fit.
Q: What problems were you trying to solve by adding a mascot to the brand?
At the time, there really weren't too many problems with brand
identity that I was trying to address with Roger. My main goal was to
steer SEOmoz away from what the rest of the industry was doing, which
was having real life spokespeople be the identity behind the brand. At
the time, we had Rand who was a figurehead in the industry, but it just
seemed too familiar in comparison to what other people were doing with
brand recognition. We had a real opportunity as a younger company to try
something different and outside of the box.
I think you run into situations with real life spokespeople that are
hard to get out of. Perceptions can change on a dime with real life
mascots, and it’s sometimes hard to change direction, especially when
the spokesperson is your CEO. With Roger, we could always pull back and
try something different if it was a massive fail. I also go back to what
I previously said about creating a mascot that has these lovable
qualities -- qualities that appeal to a broad range of people.
Q: In your experience, has the mascot helped the SEOmoz brand?
Most definitely. Having Roger has helped establish SEOmoz into its own
sort of brand niche. The fact that we created momentum and recognition
with Roger was great; we made a decision as a company to lead in the
industry when it came to mascots and visual recognition. It's tough to
set yourself apart from the competition these days, whether with
technology innovation or brand innovation. It's really about seeing what
the competition is doing and going into a different direction that is
still relevant.
However, I wish it was just as easy as creating a mascot and, wah-lah,
you have a recognizable brand. You almost have to tread a fine
invisible line with mascots, because you can really get into a situation
where you overexpose the mascot and dilute the true focus, which should
be that of product innovation and customer service. I think the mascot
is really secondary, or even tertiary, to good product design when it
comes to visual hierarchy in the brand. A good user experience and
useful features is really where the focus needs to be when it comes to
the brand of the company; this is really what keeps people coming back.
It’s really easy for people to create a mascot and put it on
everything imaginable, but you can get to a point where people just
don’t want to see it anymore and it loses its impact. I would almost
compare that scenario to an overplayed song like "The Macarena." I
really think SEOmoz has done a great job of not over exposing its users
to Roger. Moz has really used Roger as the sort of loveable hook to get
people in, but has also focused on the priority of creating great
features and providing outstanding customer service.
Thanks, Matt! And there you have it, folks. That’s the backstory of Roger. Let's all marvel at his work for a second:
However, the story does not end there. Matt and I go way back. I mean
WAAAY back -- like all the way to second grade back. As you can see, we
have always been hard at work creating things together.
When I started at SEOmoz, my first project was to expand the Roger
character. I have a background in illustration, so I broke out my trusty
pencil and started animating Roger in alternate poses, adding different
costumes and situations, the works. To this day, I literally have piles
of hand drawn Roger images and assets that we then scan and rebuild in
Adobe Illustrator. Currently, we are developing new landscape scenes for
Roger to live in, which we call the "Land of Moz" around the office.
Ultimately, this expansion to Roger’s lifestyle helped redefine Roger to
become the robot we all know and love today.
The changes made to Roger are both minute and drastic at the same
time. Rather than list out each difference, I will just show you. After
all, I am a visual type of person. Check it out!
Wondering why we chose to remodel Roger? It’s rather simple, really.
Roger had become such an important part of our brand identity that he
had to have some elements added to enable his scalability as we grew as a
company. Roger’s darting eyes and non-emotional facial features were
making it easy for some folks (sadly) to make fun of him. I noticed that
sometimes when we were having technical issues, comments would be made
such as “Oh no, Roger broke this,” which caused me to feel that we had
an empathy problem with Roger that needed to be addressed to make sure
that he did not go the way of Clippy.
Part of this included a reevaluation how we use Roger in our branding. Roger is a representation of our TAGFEE Code, with
an emphasis on “fun.” Using Roger to reject faulty credit card numbers
or inform users of a problem with a tool directly contrasts with
positive emotional engagement. Therefore, we now use Roger sparingly and
strategically to ensure his longevity.
Roger has also recently achieved a healthy dose of anthropomorphism by
adding a super simple phoneme chart so he can express emotion more
effectively. For you non-designy people out there, a phoneme chart is a
fancy name for a list of mouth expressions. We have really seen a
difference in the reactions towards Roger after his recent redesign, as
minimal as they may seem to be. Roger was huggable before, but now he is
irresistible.
Mascots like Roger help with emotional engagement with customers, and
they also add authenticity and help users connect with a website on a
personal level. If you can empathize with customers and keep users
interested, you have created a powerful win for your brand. The fact of
the matter is that SEOmoz is filled with lovable robots (which we call
“employees”) doing their best to provide an optimal user experience
every day. This is what Matt strived to illustrate with Roger back in
2010, and what I am continuing to work towards in 2013.
Reference:-http:-//www.seomoz.org/blog/the-evolution-of-roger
EBriks Infotech:- SEO India
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