The Mentor

Zendesk cofounder Alexander Aghassipour asked the Danish designer Toke Nygaard for a mascot in 2007, the year the company started in Copenhagen. Zendesk's own brand page called him the Buddhy, pronounced boo-dee, "because he approaches his work with calm, focus, and a sense of humor." He ran the whole arc, from a Copenhagen startup to the front of the New York Stock Exchange on IPO day in 2014. Nygaard later joined Zendesk as Chief Creative Officer, which means the person who made him is also the person who signed off on killing him. The 2016 rebrand retired the lotus mark and the Mentor together, in favour of a modular geometric system, and Zendesk's own post put it like this: he is "now living out his days, fat and happy, in an old mascot retirement home."

in the news

2014-05 Zendesk hung the Mentor across the front of the New York Stock Exchange for its IPO.

2014-10 The Angry Asian Buddhist blog argued Zendesk had commercialised Budai imagery and leaned on Orientalist framing in its social posts. Nygaard later said the logo "never really offended anyone in a serious way" and that the trouble was "people offended on behalf of people who would be offended".

2016-10 Zendesk retired the lotus mark and the Mentor together, replacing both with the Relationshapes geometric system.

retired with honors

the scorecard

Personality Calm, happy and ready to listen is a clear support personality, but it never developed past the original literal joke. The deeper problem was internal: executives would not animate him or push him in campaigns in case the religious imagery caused trouble. A mascot nobody will move is already retired in everything but name.

Design The orange robe, green field, bald head, and headset were instantly recognizable and impossible to scale into a neutral enterprise system.

Deployment He covered the logo, shirts, cycling kit, coffee cups, office murals, bus shelters, billboards, the 404 page, a sub-product mark, and the facade of the New York Stock Exchange. Then Zendesk retired him and said so out loud.

The right mascot for a young startup and a terrible inheritance for a global platform.

The Mentor — The front of the New York Stock Exchange

The Mentor — Reception, Zendesk HQ, San Francisco

The Mentor — A San Francisco bus shelter

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got a shot of The Mentor we don't have? send it in · images via Toke Nygaard, Cuban Council

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