Novel design patterns used to attract user attention but not a call-to-action

On the seek.com job website there is an interesting little character on the top of the navigation:

When you hover over this character, there is a small interaction/animation

Which basically extends the selection areas for the Career Advice navigation menu item.

I am wondering if there is a term for this design pattern, which is an auxiliary UI element to a primary UI element, but which is not explicitly labelled as such.