Transform Your Brand with Powerful Archetypes
Did you know that many of the famous brands you know are crafted with human personalities in mind?
It's true!
In the marketing world, these are called brand archetypes. They are based on the work of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist.
These archetypes represent a range of memorable personalities, giving brands human characteristics and dimension.
Here are the 12 core archetypes, with famous examples listed next to each one:
The Innocent - Dove soap
The Everyman (or woman) - Home Depot
The Hero - Nike
The Outlaw - Harley-Davidson
The Explorer - Jeep
The Creator - Crayola
The Ruler - Mercedes-Benz
The Magician - Disney
The Lover - Godiva chocolate
The Caregiver - Campbell's soup
The Jester - Ben & Jerry's
The Sage - Google
Whenever I develop new messaging for a client, I always take the time to determine their brand archetype. As brands are rarely a pure archetype, I work to identify a dominant archetype (70%) and a sub-archetype (30%) to round it out and give the final brand archetype more complexity.
For example, I worked with an educational consulting firm that trains educators in the science of reading.
I determined their archetype to be a combination of a Caregiver (70%) and an Outlaw (30%), because they were committed to advocacy while challenging the status quo.
I pulled visual images, words, and phrases that evoked those archetypes, and utilized them as I created new messaging for their website and other customer-facing marketing materials.
Brand archetypes are both useful and fun, and the archetype reveal always sparks conversation.
There are countless resources on this topic, but if you'd like to familiarize yourself with the basics, check out this post.
