Let’s start first by asking “Why would we need to hire a comic artist?”

One word: Branding.

Having a comic artist in the team can help you create the following advantages for your business:

Cartoon mascot(s) appearing on your product and website

Mascots are unique and friendly people/figures that can evoke positive reaction, create much stronger lasting impression and make customers/users feel more interested in what you have to offer. Smashing Magazine has a nice article about using cartoon mascots in modern web design here.

Cartoon mascots can be seen everywhere on the internet these days. It’s a strong trend. Miku and Mirai from Vocaloid and DannyChoo are my favorite cartoon mascots .

Cartoon mascots can be found on physical products, like rice!

I definitely think something like that would be a big hit in Vietnam

Some comic strips to entertain online visitors

A ubiquitous type of branding strategy is to show your product/service through as many channels as you can. And besides video, audio, game… comic is another media to think about. Internet users love comics. And if you have something funny and meaningful for the users to read along the way exploring your site, people would appreciate the effort and feel more sympathized with your product/service.

The guys at PennyArcade are masters in terms of making comic strips for the purpose of branding. Their Penny Arcade Presents page is a must check.

My favorite comic strip in that page is definitely this one.

If you want to get a mascot for your site/product, either a graphic designer with a knack for creating comic characters or a comic artist with a knack for graphic designing would do. You can either find a comic artist on DeviantArt or simply purchase the rights for some specific artwork on iStockphoto. But before you move on, there are important thing to consider:

1) Who are your end users?

…and would they be attracted to comic characters? In GoDaddy case, which is an internet domain and service vendor, it happens that the target customers are mostly male grease monkeys, college students and geeky daddies (men, for short). So using human girl mascots for web design is the right strategy.

Otherwise, comic/cartoon/manga/anime style may attract younger audience of both genders and larger audience of female users in general. Of course, there are always male users who would be attracted towards cute 2D girl mascots instead of sexy human girl mascots (i.e. me).

2) Are there competitors already doing the same thing?

If other competitors are doing the same thing, there would be two main options. One is to try making more unique mascot designs. Give your artist longer time and better payment. If you like his style, then have faith that something amazing will come up.

If you want to save time and money, the other solution is to make the same thing, changing a little bit and pray that the customers at your region won’t notice. This would be easier, but the tactic is not highly recommended. For web businesses that would be an impossible mission.

3) How abundant is your budget?

If there is enough money, another tactic we can think of is to do both. Most game companies nowadays have human mascot and digital mascots (based on game characters) at the same time.

For example, Luna Online use YaoYao as a real life mascot and have their cute cartoon mascots drawn based on the game’s characters.

Otherwise, a cartoon mascot would be a more effective and economical investment than a real life mascot.