INSIGHTS
Time to Read: 5 minutes
Written by Asa Goldstein
You've surely heard about brand archetypes in the discourse surrounding startup branding, and perhaps during your own company's branding process.
"Is your brand the Rebel, the Explorer, or the Jester?" Quizzes, blogs, and lead magnets abound.
Here's the problem: archetypes have become unnecessarily restrictive and frankly ineffective in an overcrowded market. Archetypes are simply overdone––and just as often misused.
Audiences are getting wise (and numb) to these archetypes. Could you tell the difference, with 100% certainty, between a Patagonia ad and a North Face ad, without the logo helping you to identify them?
If your brand is defined by a single traditional archetype, you’re missing out on a widely untapped opportunity to meaningfully differentiate your brand, make your message more memorable, and form a deeper connection with your audience.
Archetypes are powerful because they supposedly live intrinsically in our subconscious mind/collective unconscious.
The fundamental truth that traditional archetypal frameworks ignore, to their detriment, is that the subconscious is not fixed or walled––it’s a fluid space of intertwined associations and feelings, constantly morphing and expanding to evolve our understanding of our world and our own minds.
Our perceptions of the universe, the stories with which we connect, and the characters within them, don't always fit into neat little boxes. In fact, they hardly ever do.
Here's how you can craft a truly unique and authentic brand personality by using archetypes as tools rather than restrictive boxes.
1. Determine your ideal audience’s traditional archetypal mix, labeling them A1 & A2, i.e. the Rebel and the Jester. (The book "Archetypes in Branding" by Margaret Pott Hartwell and Joshua C. Chen is a great resource to expand your library of archetypes.)
2. Determine your preliminary traditional brand archetypes based upon the relationship that your ideal customer is seeking, labeled B1 & B2. i.e. the Explorer (to help the Rebel find their way) and the Caregiver (to help the Jester find comfort in their authenticity). Don’t make the mistake of basing your archetypes on how you ‘feel’ your company should come across or what your collective team agrees is your personality. Build your brand specifically to attract your ideal audience.
P.S. In the preliminary archetype selection process, don’t be afraid to invent a new archetype that you think most people would recognize with a flood of associations, i.e. the Technician, the Salesman, the Fashionista, etc. Don’t be fooled by the existing ‘rulebook’––there are literally infinite potential recognizable archetypes. The more specific, the better.
3. Create an Archetype Morph Table (coined by yours truly), with all four archetypes (B1, B2, A1, A2) on both sides of the table. Black out the duplicate combinations (as pictured below).
4. Now, find the abstract commonalities between each possible combination. i.e. What do the Rebel and the Caregiver have in common? (Being down to earth, caring for individuals more than institutions, etc.) What do the Jester and the Explorer have in common? The Jester and the Caregiver? And so on. Write them in the corresponding boxes. As you can see, there are countless potential permutations available to you.
5. Now eliminate the archetypes. Forget them––they’ve served their purpose. Prune what remains until it’s a fairly cohesive mix of statements. I say ‘fairly’ because if some of the traits feel a bit funny or paradoxical when combined, you’re on the right track to true originality.
Your brand personality and voice guidelines are what’s left in the boxes––a totally unique yet instinctively familiar framework that encapsulates what your brand stands for and how it communicates.
This practice follows the philosophy of paradoxical branding––allowing your brand to be both and neither, existing in a mysterious and unexpected space found between the known and the new.
You may end up with what you realize is a recognizable, but very niched, archetype. Perhaps an entirely original one. At that point, the core benefit of archetypes as a concept returns to shine once again, sparking an immediate collective understanding by your team and your audience.
Using this framework, your new brand personality will tickle the existing associations in the minds of your audience while introducing an essence that feels brand new and inimitable.
Have fun!
