Archetypes in Brand Building

Starting a brand online is easier than ever. With lower barriers to entry thanks to social media and the ubiquity of high-speed internet, anyone with a smartphone, internet connection, and/or a bit of self-confidence can launch a brand — there are well over 200 million business accounts on Instagram, for example.

That being said, lower barriers to entry mean inevitable oversaturation. The challenge is less “How do I get my brand out there?”, and more “How do I get my brand to stand above the crowded internet marketplace?”?

The bad news, Dear Reader, is there’s no “Golden Goose” that’ll make your brand stand out online. However, the good news is, research shows that brands cultivating a personality similar to real people perform better. One of the best tools for ensuring your brand cultivates a healthy personality, and resonates with the folks buying your stuff, is by framing your brand through archetypes.?

For one, putting your brand through an archetypal lens helps prevent coming across as an out-of-touch marketing executive. And trust me, there’s plenty of those around. Secondly, using archetypes in branding helps articulate your brand’s differentiation on the ground level.?

Typically, archetypes are only applied in external branding initiatives. This leads to a one-dimensional approach to consulting archetypes and an equally one-dimensional brand. Consulting the archetypes requires digging deep; brand builders have to articulate and embody the traits of an archetype across all internal/external dimensions to create resonance with digital consumers. They will smell your bullshit from a mile away if you don't.

Luckily for you, I’m a bit of a nerd. I spend tons of time studying Jung’s work on archetypes (for fun!), so here’s the Olympic Fire of archetypal wisdom so you don’t have to wade through obfuscating Jungian ideas.

So, What Are Archetypes, Anyway?

Archetypes are an idea proposed by Carl Jung. You’ve probably heard of him before, but take a minute to skim his Wikipedia page, if you haven't. Jung is a fascinating dude, to say the least.

In Jung’s own words: “The primordial image, or archetype, is a figure…that constantly recurs [throughout the] course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed. Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure…In each of these images, there is a little piece of human psychology… a remnant of the joys and sorrows that have been repeated countless times in our ancestral history…”

Archetypes, in essence, are the “first form” (or prototypical form) of a person, object, or idea.?They are often represented as common and understood patterns of human behavior, crystallized into a “character”.

Here’s a brief list of a few archetypes to give you a feel for my personal interpretation. I won’t give you a full breakdown of each archetype, there’s already a ton of content about that online.??

The Hero

A hero is one that goes above and beyond for the sake of her tribe or community. They venture into the unknown to bring back knowledge and experience of the “other side” to enrich and empower their communities. Heroes typically have courage in abundance and are willing to fight the status quo for the promise of a better tomorrow.

The Outlaw

Outlaw archetypes are often characterized by their refusal to live within societal norms. While often thought of as villainous, the outlaw can also have heroic tendencies, even if it’s for their own personal gain. They are closer to anti-heroes than villains and are often the catalyst of change or antagonists of unchallenged cultural norms.

The Trickster

The trickster archetype is a fun one. Morally ambiguous, always with their own agenda, tricksters cause mischief for mischief’s sake. They are very self-oriented, often playing both sides of any conflict to maximize personal gain. While not always evil, their intentions are occluded behind scheming and fickle loyalties.

Again, those are just a few of the many archetypes that apply to brand building. In case it isn’t clear, these are my personal definitions of these archetypes. The beauty of archetypes is there is a bit of wiggle room for personal interpretation, insofar as the main elements of the archetypes remain intact.

Take a minute and think about what a Sage is. What are the first mental images that pop into your head? I would bet both my typing hands that your mind went to an older dude (or woman!) with, maybe, a pointy hat and a cloak? Or maybe your mind went to characters like Gandalf, Dumbledore, the Fairy Godmother from Cinderella, or Athena? This is because archetypal images are already “pre-loaded” into the minds of every human.

Jung's theory of the collective unconscious can explain the reason your mind most likely drew from these “pre-loaded” images. The collective unconscious is the idea that there are specific images, experiences, or known patterns of human behavior that all humans intuitively understand, basically from birth. A way I think about the collective unconscious is like an incorporeal, shared Google Drive that uploads specific images, experiences, or known patterns of human behavior across all human individuals at birth.

A good example to support the theory of the collective unconscious is the innate human fear of snakes. Most humans have an intrinsic distrust for these coiled reptiles and for good reason! Back when humans were tree-dwelling primates, snakes were obviously something to watch out for. The danger of snakes impressed upon our earliest primate ancestors left quite a mark, and despite our continued evolution to the upright hominids we are today, most people have a healthy disdain for snakes, despite being far removed from the dangers of a boa constrictor wrapping herself around your toddler (in most situations).

This leads us back to why archetypes are important for branding initiatives: universal relevance. The universal quality of archetypes and their ability to reach deep into people's psyches is what makes them so useful for branding. Archetypes are NOT simple reductions of human behavior and psychology or shortcuts for relating to an audience, despite what the brand-archetype literature would have you believe. They are multivalent, universally applicable expressions of the human experience!

Stereotype vs. Archetype

It’s important to take a minute to address the criticism that archetypes are inherently reductive and propagate negative stereotypes. This isn’t the case at all. It’s an easy argument to make, but there are small, crucial differences between stereotypes and archetypes, so let’s go over them real quick.?

Stereotypes are reductive, superficial analyses of a person’s (usually a group of people) characteristics and behaviors. They are, by their very definition, one-dimensional and ignorant portrayals devoid of nuance.?

Archetypes, on the other hand, are multivalent — open to multiple different interpretations and cultural nuance. The hero archetype, for example, might vary slightly in form, depending on the underlying culture. At its core, though, the behaviors of a heroic archetype are fundamentally the same, regardless of culture, creed, religion or race. This is why people can resonate with culturally unique heroic characters or brands despite not being fully knowledgeable about that particular culture.?

Using Archetypes to Align Internal/External Operations

It can be difficult to figure out which archetype is directly applicable to your brand, but keep in mind, they aren’t rigid guidelines. A good way to gut-check which archetype is best for your brand is by considering your unique approach to internal operations to inform which archetype you’d like to project.?

Archetypes MUST resonate across the internal dimensions of your brand, not just the external dimensions. Your business operations, approach to customer support, core brand philosophy, and the way you treat your audience/employees, are all essential elements that inform your brand’s archetype.?

Instead of retroactively applying the image of an archetype to your brand for the sake of a witty headline or badass social media campaign, take a moment and reflect on your personal approach toward running your brand.?

Is transparency important to you? Are you providing a service or product you believe will benefit your audience? Are you a hardcore work/life-balance evangelist? Maybe you’re an advocate for social change and your brand is a good way to make a difference and get paid (nothing wrong with that).?

I understand the advice of taking time to think about your brand sounds trite, but we are deep in a culture of immediacy, so taking time to think about… well, anything, beyond the surface level often makes the bottom of the priority list. The fact you’re still reading this is a good sign that you’re willing to think things through, though, so shoutouts.?

Everywhere you look in the brand-archetype literature, they’ll tell you that sports brands embody the Hero archetype. While yes, that’s true on a superficial level, most of the common brands you’ll see put into this category aren’t BEHAVIORALLY heroic. They might be ubiquitous brands (which speaks more to huge marketing spend), but many brands put into this category are hardly heroic in action.?

For example, if you look up what brand embodies the Hero archetype, you’ll often get told that Nike is the quintessential representation of the Hero archetype.?

Yes, Michael Jordan, and many of the athletes used in Nike marketing, are heroic — paragons of excellence in a highly competitive profession — but what does the heroic example of athletes have to do with Nike other than the exchange of money and a few pictures on billboards or promotional marketing materials? I would argue very little.?

In fact, I would argue that Nike embodies the Innovator archetype. Nike innovated the athletic shoe market through high-performance marketing and celebrity endorsements. Nike innovated the way that companies can be profitable with manufacturing in an increasingly globalized world by using cheap (often young) labor to make their products at wild profit margins. But Heroic? Eh. Abusing lax child labor laws in underdeveloped countries or dancing with financial fraud is arguably the opposite of heroic.?

Conclusion

In a world where thousands of new brands are popping up every minute and the channels to market these brands have incredibly low barriers to entry, it would behoove brand builders to reflect on not only how they want to appear externally, but how they go about formulating the operational processes internally. Using archetypes as a catalyst to align these endeavors is mad helpful. The power of archetypal brand building is meaningful brand differentiation by aligning internal and external processes under a singular brand philosophy.?

That wasn’t so bad, was it? Which archetypes speak to you? Why? Share your insight with the class in the comments below — I can never get enough of talking about this stuff.?

Peace out,

Chris Blanchard

Writer | Editor