If there was a buddy cop movie starring the Geico gecko and the Aflac duck, I’m pretty sure it would outperform “Edge of Tomorrow” at the box office.

We love our anthropomorphized branding mascots. Shortly after Basecamp hatched its own such character, I was watching a big event on TV, and it seemed as though every product in every commercial had sprouted arms and legs. I guess we are part of the zeitgeist.

While I would love to take credit for inventing our Basecamp creature because he came out of the tip of my Micron, the fact is Jason asked me to create it, and it’s pretty hard to go wrong by adding humanoid features to the Basecamp logo. The results are bound to be adorable. Shawnimals had made a similar character months before with the Happy Sherpa, and our design intern this summer, Julia, also made a nice version. That said, I’m proud of the character I helped create, and I’m glad to see it gain momentum. What started as an experiment seems to have taken hold.


At Basecamp, our marketing is more intuitive than contrived. We don’t have dedicated marketing or sales staff. We pay attention to data but it doesn’t own us (take that Noah). I think the philosophy has been that the best marketing is a superior product. Basecamp sells itself, but it doesn’t hurt to have something cool to print on T-shirts. That is where this mascot comes into play. Internally we have been calling it “Basecampy,” and I heard someone call it “Mr. Basecamp” the other day. Let it be known, however, that it is genderless. It reproduces through binary fission. A creation myth is in the works. Basecampy may stick as the name, but we are open for suggestions. Leave your thoughts in the comments.