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In contemporary advertising and marketing promotions, various strategies have evolved and are being used to actualize the goals and aspirations of marketers and advertising agencies. One such strategy is animation. Animation has proven to be an effective vehicle that drives home messages in newspaper, magazine, billboard and television advertising; especially in selling products to children and adults alike; such product might be candies, chocolates, biscuits, toys and soft drinks. Sometime around 1995, Nigerians and persons elsewhere woke up to experience the very unique animated cartoon character called “Fido Dido” which the soft drink manufacturing company, 7Up employed as the mascot that was used in marketing the various variants of 7Up soft drink products. This cartoon character was conceived and developed by the renowned animators, Joanna Ferrone (b.1950) and Susan Rose (b.1954). In this essay, the author takes a look at animation as vehicle for advertising, the concept of animation creation, a brief biography of the creators of Fido Dido, the persona of the character, Fido Dido and how its application in the advertising of the 7Up products boosted its sales records the world over. The objective of this study is to bring out the effectiveness of animated cartoon characters in advertising campaigns while the methods used in this study are the ethnographic and survey techniques and at the end, it was found out that prior to the creation of Fido Dido, 7Up never sold as much as they did after its employment.

Keywords: Marketing, Promotion, Animation, Advertising techniques, Brand ambassador