Why Moonpig revived its brand mascot

Back in 2017 online card and gifting site Moonpig made the decision to retire its pig logo.

A literal take on the Moonpig brand name, the logo featured a space pig floating in an astronaut’s helmet. The brand said goodbye to the pig with a YouTube ‘hogumentary’ showing his leaving do and exit from the company, part of a wider brand refresh to raise awareness of Moonpig’s status as a retailer of gifts, not just cards.

Fast forward four years and the mascot is back as an animated pig set to be at the heart of the company’s campaigns going forward. The pig, clad in a variety of costumes from a juicy avocado to a superhero, is currently fronting a multichannel campaign spanning TV, outdoor and digital. New piglet iterations are already being primed.

For Moonpig CMO, Kristof Fahy, it was a no brainer to bring the pig back. Fahy joined the business in 2019 and was immediately convinced the mascot should never have been retired. He points to how the pig sits alongside the brand’s unique name, strong pink colour and jingle as an “incredible brand asset” which had been confined to history. Suddenly, tapping into what made the brand special became a priority.

“I’ve come in and gone, ‘I don’t understand why we’re not using the jingle anymore? People sing it to us and it’s amazing’. So, the first thing I did in the first few weeks was bring back the jingle. I said, ‘We’ve got this amazing brand colour pink that we own, why don’t we use that more?’. We now use it all the time,” Fahy explains.