In the December issue of Vanity Fair, Jim Windolf takes on America’s increasing obsession with cuteness in his article Addicted to Cute. He posits that companies, who are doing bad and decidedly un-cute things, will often try to identify their brand with something that pushes our cute button, because it triggers the bit of our brain that probably evolved out of a desire to protect our offspring. If we associate a brand like Geico (an insurance company that deals with ugliness as a core part of its mandate) with an adorable gecko, consumers and potential consumers are distracted into thinking that the gecko is the company and we are less likely to think about their actual business. In fact, we may want to protect the company, in a strange and abstract way.

As another example, Windolf draws attention to the evolving face of Disney icon Mickey Mouse:

In a 1979 article for Natural History, evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould noted … [Mickey Mouse] evolved from the thin cackling rodent of the silent-film era to the high-voiced, plump-headed figure of the 1950s and beyond. So as the Walt Disney Company grew more powerful and profitable, its public face grew cuter.

Disney – Mickey Mouse image by Joe Penniston.