NewPanda needs a Mascot!

NewPanda

Wow, where to begin?! We're a generously-backed start-up looking to make a big splash with our new online service. NewPanda is for organizations and brands of all shapes and sizes who want to get their message out through all the latest channels. From one, super-easy-to-use place, you can create a message and send it to your people via beautiful email templates, interactive text messages, tweets, Facebook posts and the web.

Anyone with a message to share and an audience to share it with. Like ... small businesses, non-profits, pet shops, campaigns, artists, causes, reunion committees, groups, sales pros, consultants, agencies, Fortune 500,000's, charities, churches, tattoo parlors, Southern Balinese restaurants, schools, doctors, Realtors and rock & roll bands. Just to name a few.

Our goal is to build a powerful brand identity as we grow the ultimate communication platform. We purposefully chose a generic name (as opposed to something like EmailMobileSocialSender.com) so that we could be flexible to adapt to new marketing trends and technologies. We're NOT trying to impress corner-office-suited-types with a conservative corporate identity. Instead, we want to have a little fun.

Our initial instinct is to create a custom illustrated panda mascot (see attached file with an example we love). Everyone likes pandas - but we want ours to be their favorite. A friendly creature who we can brand with our different tools. We plan to offer products which will each need to be sub-branded - something like our panda mascot holding something for each:
NewPanda (our official panda mascot/logo)
NewPanda CRM (maybe holding a rolodex)
NewPanda E-MARKETING (envelope or delivery hat)
NewPanda SOCIAL (box with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn icons sticking out)
NewPanda REAL ESTATE EDITION (house)
NewPanda Mobile (mobile phone)

If you have an idea for a mark instead of a mascot, we'd love to see it and will consider that route also.

PLANNED USES:
Our hope is that this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. We'll want to position our NewPanda in a variety of ways (dress him up for the holidays, have some surprise faces appear occasionally (happy, sad, etc). So, we'll want to know if you're open to future work and your rates. Regardless, we'll need all your huge, original, vector art resources so any good designer can work with the panda in a variety of ways (from changing body positions to designing for a billboard).

We're at the beginning of the design process, so we don't have any websites, color requirements, etc. Please share your thoughts and feedback!