Ad pros say Meta should ignore the haters and go all in on its cuddly Muse mascot

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Could Meta's Muse get even more Jolly?

By now, you've probably seen plenty of cynical hot takes about Meta's choice to represent its new AI agent with Jolly, the cuddly mascot. "Surveillance Tamagotchi." "Don't believe his lies." "It's sinister that Meta's Muse AI mascot is so cute."

Marketing and branding pros have a different take: Meta should lean even harder into its Jolly side.

"That mascot will become so familiar over time that it will become almost like the Coke bottle," said Gary Stibel, CEO of the New England Consulting Group. "It will become their bridge to safety, reliability, and efficiency."

Jolly didn't feature in Meta's launch TV ad for Muse. Instead, that promo showed a woman preparing a meal, while Muse worked in the background to sort through emails, register kids for fall sports, add a carpool to the family calendar, and buy school supplies.

muse is going NATIONWIDE to a television near you

this is our first @muse ad ever, going live this weekend! we hope you like it while watching the big game(s)!

big ups to @joshginsberg, denise, and the whole meta marketing team ❤️ pic.twitter.com/1zMUVgdKna

— Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang) September 20, 2026

To my eye, it had the aesthetics and generic "here's what the product does" formula of many an AI ad before it.

Data from ad testing firms System1 and DAIVID suggest that the approach was a mistake.

System1 gave the ad a star rating of 1.8 out of a possible 5.9. The rating uses viewers' emotional responses to gauge an ad's potential to drive long-term growth. The ad's "fluency" score, which measures the strength of the branding in the ad on a scale of 0 to 100, came in at 49 — anything under 72 is considered a low score.

AI-creative testing platform DAIVID found that the Muse TV ad elicited more negative emotions than the global norm, while some positive emotions, such as "joy," "excitement," "admiration," and "warmth," were weaker than average. It scored well on responses including "knowledge," "entrancement," and "relief," but attention levels were slightly below the benchmark throughout.

"The ad certainly piqued viewers' interest, but it didn't excite or surprise them in the way you might expect from a major new product launch," Ian Forrester, DAIVID CEO, told me.

Brand mascots are one of the oldest mnemonics in the marketing toolkit, helping people form a positive emotional association with a brand.

What's the first thing you think of when I say Geico, Kool-Aid, or Duolingo? Chances are, a mascot springs to mind.

"Meta follows this playbook with Jolly, using Kindchenschema, our innate draw to cute, infant-like features, to make surprising new technology easier to accept," said System 1's chief growth officer, Andrew Tindall.

The Meta Ad Library shows the company is taking a mixed approach to promoting Muse in ads on Facebook and Instagram. Some feature Jolly, while others home in on the product's functional benefit and include clips from the TV ad. Jolly also features in some outdoor ads

At least one Meta executive is gleefully, consistently, and often ostentatiously flying the Team Jolly flag. Alexandr Wang's X feed is a Jolly shrine, with the chief AI officer posting and reposting the mascot inserted into memorable internet moments like Kim Kardashian's "break the internet" Paper magazine cover and the George W. Bush 9/11 meme, as well as other images that accentuate its posterior.

so let it be written, so let it be done https://t.co/sIVmbkAgjJ

— Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang) September 23, 2026

VaynerX CMO Avery Akkineni, who attended the Muse launch event at Menlo Park last week, said Wang's increasingly public persona — striking camo-print T-shirt very much included — and the introduction of Jolly underscored how Meta is intentionally striking a different tone.

"In some ways, it does humanize the product a little bit," Akkineni said. "I am certain that their intention is to make this more widely available and accessible than just for the early-adopter crowd."