REVIEWSWell-known in the Ohana, Salesforce presenters often refer to an ever-growing list of Salesforce Characters. But here are still many people who are new to the Salesforce world, and don’t have a clue what they’re about!
If you’re new to Salesforce, you’ll soon figure out that these grown-ups are referring to cartoon animals or soft toy figures! And not just once, but these cartoons are all over their Salesforce presentation materials.
So, if you recently sat there and wondered “What animal is Appy Salesforce?” or ‘Who or what is Salesforce Einstein?” …. instead of listening to the presenter’s content,… it’s time for you to familiarise yourself with the wide family of beloved Salesforce Characters.
The whole idea behind it all is that the Salesforce mascots make learning all the dry coding stuff a lot more fun. But meanwhile, each sales force character actually represents a kind of Persona in the Salesforce eco-system. They hope you might find one you can identify with.
Meet the Salesforce Characters Family
This family set of characters that look like animals came about when Salesforce started building Trailhead. Number one was Astro.
Meet Astro, the Tanuki
Astro has been the most popular Salesforce mascot to date. He/She’s YOUR GUIDE to Salesforce. He/She represents that Salesforce persona who helps others to learn Salesforce.
He/she’s featured in pretty much every presentation by Salesforce today.
He’s been dressed up in just about every costume imaginable: as an astronaut, a scientist, a doctor, and so on. Every year or so, he gets a new Halloween costume.
Kind Lionheart Astro, who’s on a mission!
Astro has siblings too. Introduced July 2016, Lionheart Astro supports nonprofit, educational, and philanthropic organisations to realise their social mission, to its max. potential. If you’re working hard to make the world a better place, it’s useful to have a championing character or mascot! That’s Lionheart Astro, with a bold voice, lots of courage, and a heart of gold. He/She’s your guide to all things nonprofit, Salesforce.org and the community around it, such as CloudAnalysts, who have taken the 1% pledge.
Meet Einstein, Resident Genius
He stands for Artificial Intelligence. And being really smart, of course. He seeks the future.
While he’s often featured with lots of fun attributes, he’s always teaching, it appears.
The cartoon is nicer than its plush toy version.
How we’ve featured ‘Salesforce Einstein AI’ at CloudAnalysts.
Glamorous Brandy
Brandy the Fox is the Salesforce’s character introduced on August 12, 2021! She personifies all of us marketers in the Salesforce ecosystem!!! That’s us!! Brandy help us get the best out of our challenges, experiences and journeys – regarding all things Marketing with Salesforce.
As marketing with Salesforce increasingly means realising moments that matter on the customer journey, Brandy helps us marketers make amazing, one-of-a-kind customer experiences. The kind of experiences that inspire long-term customer relationships.
Brandy’s Other Traits
Approachable: she embodies the trust and can-do attitude of Trailblazers. Her large ears are listening for any marketer’s needs.
Adaptable: Just like a wild fox, Brandy adapts with ease and agility to changes and new surrounding.
With a Good Sense for timing: Brandy knows when and where to deliver to deliver the content and experiences your customers are expecting. Her fancy watch helps here with spot on delivery!
Courageous, resourceful, and experience journey traveler: knows how to get the most from every stop she makes along the way.
Like any good fox, she’s calculating, or put differently … Analytical: Brandy’s curious and easily spots useful information to develop new and innovating strategies. She uses all available information to cross into new terrains. Foxy!
Moving: Brandy is always on the move towards her next goal or challenge!
And that sums up Brandy.
Appy, the Popcat
A slightly newer character. She looks like a girl-guide cat with glasses.
Appy is focused on forging partnerships. Her ‘connector’ personality type enables her to do so. Plus, she knows lots about Salesforce and all of you in the Salesforce eco-system.
Codey, the Bear
Codey is the big cuddly bear who loves coding getting his paws dirty in code and config. He is to inspire builders and makers, aka Developers!
See how we featured Codey and Koa at our article with Highlights of the Salesforce Summer-19 Release.
Cloudy, the Goat
Not the clearest of personas, this Salesforce character personified as a white mountain goat.
He is associated with innovative app builders.
Kinda cute!
Meet Blaze, the Wolf, and your trusted companion on the path to success.
This is one of the last characters added to the family and not often seen alone. Maybe because she’s the one who loves teamwork.
About her persona: “Faithful, nurturing, intelligent, and trustworthy, Blaze is a born leader who knows a thing or two about safely navigating the wild. She’ll help you jump over obstacles, move around barriers, and clearly see the path forward.
As Salesforce consultants who help clients achieve business transformation success, we love Blaze as our favourite mascot!
Hootie, the Owl
Hootie was an early bird on the scene, and must beloved by me. I featured here in all my presentations for Salesforce University course deliveries. This adorable owl represents knowledge, skills and credentials.
Earnie, the Badger
The trailblazing Badger! He’s the one who wants to collect all badges on Trailhead.
Well, with 200+ badges to my name personally, I still can not say I do identify with Earnie, but I know he’ll be just right for some. And I DO like the fact that he’s shown here serving up breakfast for Trailblazing Salesforce learners… I wonder if that’s maple sirup on top…. Mmmm…
“Always be learning”
Those are really the most commonly featured characters. But when you see larger Trailhead family photos, you might also see ….
Koa, the Dog
He’s really cute, like a loyal golden retriever. No wonder that his nickname is ‘Chief Love Officer’. Adorable.
Salesforce created a prestigious club, the Koa Club, recognising employees who have gone the distance with Salesforce.
Max, the Mule
Never heard of him? Well, he’s your integration one-stop-shop animal. Hint, hint,… invented after the acquisition of… Mulesoft?! Don’t get roasted like a marshmallow, use Mulesoft instead for your Salesforce integrations.
Meta, the Moose
He personifies the Engineering Architect. Yeah, that’s why you don’t see him so often. He’s busy.
Ruth, the Salesforce Architect
Of course, the elephant persona refers to the fact that elephants tend to be friendly and have amazing memories!!!!
Ruth embodies the Salesforce Ohana spirit with her Hawaiian shirt and lay. However, Ruth needs a bit of fashion advice, I think. Perhaps she looks like what people imagine when they think of a woman with a Master Degree in Salesforce.
Regardless of what you might think, Ruth is to be a ‘gender neutral’ character and stands for:
R — Responsible — taking ownership
U — Universal — being global-minded
T — Technical — having a solution-ing mindset
H — Humble — caring & sharing knowledge with others in the Ohana.
Well, I do like the acronym.
And that was the whole family of Salesforce Characters… till Dreamforce 2022, just a few days past.
LATEST UPDATE – September 2022
This article was first published in 1/20/2021. It has been updates many times. Latest update 9/20/2022.
At Dreamforce 2022, Salesforce announced Salesforce Genie, a hyper-scale, real-time data platform that turns data into customer magic. I think this is the first time, that a Salesforce character represents a product concept, rather than a type of person in the community.
As a concept, Salesforce Genie makes it easy for every business to make sense of all their data from any system, channel, or data stream. Whereas Salesforce CDP unities siloed marketing data and makes it actionable, Salesforce Genie takes it one step further. It funnels an almost infinite amount of dynamic data to Customer 360, in real time.
Customer data is continuously updating with new data from any of their touch points, faster than ever. Everything in this unified customer profile record is visible and actionable across Salesforce’s entire suite of products, including all industry solutions. Obviously, it is linked to Einstein, and is also the reason behind everyone now being required to move to Flow Automations, as Genie works with that! Genial.
In sum: Genie is real time, enables everyone, and goes across all clouds. Rest assured, you will learn more about this concept on our blog in future articles in the year to come.
Fun story behind Salesforce Genie character bunny: Did you know that rabbits have a near 360 degree vision? So, think of Genie as an agile rabbit, who’s a data analyst, and a creative magician, who sees everything!! Watch out!!! Here comes a mega-transformation of your digital marketing (and everything else Salesforce).
Updates on the initiatives around Genie: Salesforce Genie – what you need to know. Also read our introduction article on Salesforce Integration.
The ‘Ancestor’ to the family of Salesforce Characters
In terms of Salesforce Characters, there’s more that deserves an honourable mention, and that is…
Saasy, the ‘No Software’ -mascot
It all started with Salesforce’s ‘NoSoftware’-icon being envisioned as a character costume for events. It was Salesforce’s first character who would be walking around on conferences for unique, fun visitor photos. The other characters followed after as perfect event photo ops.
What Character will be Next?
Can you guess? I have some ideas… We guessed foxy. Maybe because we’re marketeers. That’s what we’re good at.
Talk to us about ideas for your new digital marketing initiatives.
Last Updated on June 30, 2023
