I Predicted This. Coco Robotics Just Did It.

Back in March, I predicted food delivery robots would become characters in our lives. Not just recurring entities. Branded ones.

First proof: Coco Robotics and Minions.

Josh Dubin, Coco’s Head of Ads, announced it on LinkedIn — a fleet fitted with custom Minion goggles, promoting Illumination’s Minions & Monsters movie. And it’s a perfect fit. The morphology practically demanded it. Those round robot eyes were built for goggles. Add the lovable nonsense babble to a robot bumbling down the sidewalk and you’ve got a character, not a delivery unit.

I only see one miss; the eyes don’t move.

Which means Coco actually took a step backward in lifelike design to make the partnership work. Best guess: retrofitting eye animation would have cost too much money and time for a collaboration with a shelf life as short as a movie release.

That’s an element worth digging into that’s specific to branding opportunities in robotics. The platform is hugely complicated and difficult to customize, which suggests the collaborations that can invest the most in character design — and therefore make the biggest impact — are the ones built to last.

Not a movie tie-in with a six-week theatrical window.

It’s a storytelling platform better fit for perennial or seasonal partners. Something closer to the Dodgers vendor or Coca-Cola Santa I floated in my last post on the subject. Brands that don't expire, and therefore can justify building out real animation, real voices, real wardrobe.

Still, this is only the first. Many more are on the way.