Brand Archetypes are a valuable tool for embodying the personality. An archetype or avatar helps to clearly etch the voice for all those that are communicating for the brand. We discuss what archetypes are, what the risks are in using them, how to present archetypes to clients, and how to narrow in on the correct one for the brand.
A full transcript of the episode:
INTRO TO ARCHETYPES
M: Welcome to Brand Frontlines, the podcast wher brands building gets real. I'm Marissa La Brecque, founder of Hyperflore.
E: And I'm Eric La Brecque, principal of Applied Storytelling.
M: Today we're doing something a little different. Usually we cover one element of the Brand Wheel in each episode. The Brand Wheel is our organizational system for a brand. But today we're going to keep on personality, which we covered last time. We didn't have time to get to archetypes, which are super helpful tools in building a personality. So we're going to dive into those today. No guests, just the straight dope on archetypes, what they are, why they're useful, how we find them, how we present them, and also the risks of using them. And then next episode, we'll cover brand promise. But before we get into all of that, what are you working on today, Eric?
E: Right after we talk about archetypes, I'm going to go into a virtual work session with the Henry Ford, one of our oldest and biggest clients. And the Henry Ford is thinking about their vision. Actually, they just are in the final stages of wrapping up their most recent strategic plan, which was driven by the vision in part, and they're getting ready to think about their next one, which coincides with their 100th anniversary. Just kind of want to make sure that the vision that's guiding them is on track. So we're going to look at it. Nothing may change, or something may change, or there may be some supporting detail that we add. So that's what's coming up.
M: I’m working on selling a course to my clients. Actually, I realized earlier this year that because I work with smaller businesses, once we're done building the brand, we've got the platform set up, we've we've done messaging, they want to keep working together to do social media or newsletters or any kind of ongoing content, but they can't afford to have me on retainer. So I created some courses. The first one, we're working on is email marketing courses. And so we're gonna like really sit with them, make sure they actually have a landing page, when we're done with the class, make sure that they really know how to create calls to action, all the things to make their emails, make money for them, but also to still feel not salesy or cheesy or too aggressive, any of the things that they're worried about feeling like that, keep them from writing those newsletters. So I'm really excited. I feel like it's a really a solution for my clients.
E: I remember something you told me a few weeks back that was really interesting was how a lot of your clients are just really hung up on social media, it's a source of real stress for them, because they know what's important, or they've been told it's important. A lot of them can see how it'd be really useful. But they're small, and you know, just the effort to get something out, especially if that's not your thing, right? You're a baker or you're making fragrances or whatever it is that you do. You don't have the staff to keep pumping stuff out. You may not have the budget to hire a social media person part time or a PR firm. And so it's a source of really great anxiety. It's where the price and the value don't really line up in the market. So I think what you're doing is great. I'm going to be listening.
ARCHETYPES: WHAT ARE THEY?
M: . So archetypes Let's talk about what they are. They have a historical context.
E: , they do. I mean, we've been dealing in archetypes for a long time as a species. I mean, some people would say, they're hardwired into our brains. We've known about archetypes for probably before we had a word for them, or a system of organizing them. The person who's generally credited with that is Carl Jung, 20th century psychologist, and archetype person. You know, what he did was kind of called out and then talk about how they could be kind of organized, what they are, are these kind of models that live in our heads— live rent free in our heads, as people say, and they crop up in literature, they crop up and how we tell stories, which is what's really interesting for me.
M: I really noticed that with our kids like, the concept of a king and a queen, and, you know, a knight or a hero, these concepts like, obviously, don't track with anything that they see in, in real life. But they just resonate so hard.
E: , they do there. And they, they shift a little bit across cultures, the names for them might shift nuances, but they're basically embedded in every culture. And they've been with us down through time. So there are these basically these forms in our psyche, and they bubble up as motifs, themes and art literature in our lives, you know, and that's really what they are. When we're talking about personality, we're looking at archetypes that are types of being, but they're archetypes of all different kinds. There are archetypes for buildings, there are archetypes for other kinds of objects. There are archetypes associated with ideas. There are archetypes for all different kinds of things. If you want to actually just enjoy living in the world of archetypes for a little bit. There's a great novel, I've just read it, called Piranesi by a British author named Susanna Clarke. And it's about somebody who's kind of lost in a world of archetypes. They're surrounded by statues, millions of them. And these statues represent sort of typical classic scenes that you might find in life. That's enough about that. But it's a great read, well written kind of gives you a flavor for archetypes from a different angle.
A lot of models have 12 archetypes. But I've seen models with where they're like 72. There could be an infinite number. But humans like systems, right? We like to boil things down, I think of archetypes is kind of like the zodiac signs. There are 12 of them. That Tarot Deck has its number of the Arcana, right, you know, we like these patterns—the I Ching. So 12 is a common number. There's no universal agreed upon set. But 12 seems to be a pretty common number. And there are generally, you know, 12 distinct archetypes that most people recognize.
ARCHETYPES AND BRANDS
M: Okay, so let's talk about why they're useful when you're creating a personality for a brand.
E: So go back and listen to the last episode, because we'll get into all the different aspects of a personality, all the different qualities that go into a good personality from a brand standpoint, but what an archetype should be doing for, for you, for your brand, for the people expressing the brand, through design through words, is rolling those individual qualities up into one recognizable, easy to understand type of being. So an archetype might be a magician, a lover, a ruler or queen, the sage there are these different every person, you know, these different types that have qualities that we can generally recognize. And if you can kind of take all the individual personality attributes and recognize the overarching pattern, then it becomes really easier to use, you're not thinking about this and that and fitting those things together. Right? You have this larger model.
M: it allows you to embody the brand get into character. ,
E: Absolutely. And it's so important to brand building that some agencies, not us necessarily, but some agencies really make that kind of a central thing that they're trying to discover about a brand.
GETTING CLIENTS ENGAGED IN THE PROCESS
M: I also find just in client relations. It's one of those things that's fun, and it feels like a little treat in the process You know, it's nice to have those little high points that people get excited about it. A lot of the stuff feels very theoretical. And so this feels like a product like something that people really can wrap their heads around, and they get, they get excited. So it's kind of a little high point in the brand building process.
E: Well, I'm glad it's a high point for you and your clients. Not always the case for us, I mean, generally a great thing to have an archetype. Not all organizations really have the appetite for it. So we try to kind of figure out if it's going to be something that's going to be well received. And what I guess what I mean by that is, to some clients, it seems a little woowoo. You know, here, all of a sudden, we're introducing something that feels a little bit like astrology or something like that, that they don't necessarily relate to. So we want to check on that. And then the other thing is, sometimes, the archetype that suits them, and their brand isn't one that they personally relate to life, you want to be a ruler, you want to be a sage, and look, all your qualities are saying, really, this brand should come across as every person or lover, and that just doesn't feel right to you. So that kind of label if it doesn't feel good to them personally, even if the quality's right, too, it can be triggering.
M: I agree that I also find it's an emotional moment, like we've talked about this before, like naming is often emotional, because it's so directly linked to identity. And people have expectations, and they want it to feel amazing right away. And sometimes it requires some rounds. So it's definitely something when you're building up to that process to be aware that there's an emotionality around it. And people have really strong reactions. And to prepare them, like you're saying, make sure there's an appetite for it, and just prepare yourself that you're going to have to like, stay cool, absorb that response to it in a correct way.
E: I mean, another thing, if you decide to go down the archetype path is to look at that label and make sure that maybe there's another label that is actually more helpful or more relatable to your client. We had a client, I don't even know what the previous label was, but it wasn't quite working for them. And we came back to the idea of a mentor. And that word worked for them better.
M: I know what you're saying I think there's a lot of ways to kind of prepare people for it get clients on board, basically, with a concept that might be foreign to them or might feel, as you said, triggering. One of those, as you mentioned, is to give it a name that feels more familiar or flattering. But one that shares the same characteristics, or maybe just a word that's more in their lingo than a union word.
DEVELOPING A BRAND ARCHETYPE
E: I think that's a very important thing to do. The other thing is, if you are going to go down the archetype path, I think it's something you get your client to buy degrees, it's kind of a frog in the water kind of thing. And so once we've got the personality attributes, then it's sort of like a detective story that we want to take them on. So what are those attributes add up to what kind of people have those attributes, and then we introduce the idea of an archetype. And we'll play back the 12 classic archetypes not a lot of detail, but just so they they see the names and then they see some brands that are generally understood to represent those archetypes and a couple of qualities associated with those archetypes, then they can start to connect the dots between those qualities that different archetypes have and the qualities that their brand has their brand personality has, then we can start to kind of get into some specifics and talk about okay, where do those qualities align? What are the qualities that you're responding to? Planned in a great table of archetypes.
M: This is kind of like a side conversation that we'll cover when we get more into talking about presentation, but I love what you're saying about showing your work. I think early on, I felt like if I just show up with the finished product, it feels like magic to the client and they're gonna think like ‘Wow, she's such a genius’ But it's so important to remember that it actually feels so much more satisfying when you bring the client along when you show them every step, in your presentation, of how you got from A to B, use their quotes and their ideas within the that framework. And then it's it's just so much more satisfying at the end of the process.
E: Well, I mean, it's something we're always trying to figure out new ways to do it new ways to get them more engaged without claiming too much of their time, right. I mean, they also we've had people tell us so how much of this time how much is my CEO going to be involved? Or if I'm the CEO, how much of my time are you going to take and we need to be able to give them a clear answer. And also, clearly, they're asking because they have some limits that they don't want to go past share. That's part of it.
So now we're looking at their qualities and we're looking at the different kinds of archetypes and we're asking them to kind of find the matches. And what we find by the way, when we do that is that generally speaking, the qualities that they've identified cluster because they're already thinking in archetypes, although usually we don't call it that. But they don't cluster always around one archetype, one type, you know, there might be let's say, there are three qualities of out of five that tend to be associated with like a sage, a wise person, but there are two that are associated with I don't know a lover.
Then we try to figure out, Okay, which one's the dominant one, which of those qualities are the most important? Which one is the kind of the recessive one, and the secondary one? And if we're looking for a kind of universal character who has both of those, what is that called? Right? Right. So it's not going to necessarily be on that 12 point, we'll we're going to have to get creative about it. So we try to figure that out.
M: I almost always do a hybrid of more than one. Almost always.
E: I think for one, it's a little more nuanced, right, you know, and so it doesn't have all the baggage, right, that goes with those labels. And, you know, labels and baggage are big issue in our business. But again, we're trying to get them along here. And so they're kind of nodding and they're kind of going okay, maybe that's right, the next kind of things that we present to help help them and you know, embrace the idea and also to be useful as tools are the idea of avatars. So avatars for us are characters who embody the archetype. And they're not all going to be exactly the same in their qualities, but broadly, they're going to kind of flesh out the archetype and we go to Avatars can be from people in real life. Generally, famous people, can be people in a company. So everybody in the company can recognize them. They can be characters from movies, books, manga, and on ma really anything. So we try to find a good representation. And when we do that, which we're trying to be diverse, actually. So are there we want to we don't have anybody from literature. We don't have to be an older white man. We try to find people of different ages, different periods of time and come up with a mix of six or seven individuals real or fictional, again, who represent that archetype.
So that's pretty fun, actually, a great tool, by the way to help find those because who's got a catalogue of avatars in their head right. Even though I read a ton, you know, and we watch a lot of shows their worlds I'm not as familiar with, like, I'm not as familiar with, you know, manga, or characters and video games a little bit, but not so much. And some of those can really resonate with our client, right. So that's where this tool TVTropes.com is super helpful. I can't say enough about it as a resource. It's got tons and tons of what they're calling TV Tropes, but they're really archetypes, a lot of them and their characters and there are plot twists, devices or all kinds of things. Again, it goes back to that broader idea of what an archetype is, but if you are looking for some examples of an archetype, and once you run out of the very limited set you've got in your own head TVTropes is a really excellent resource. I can't say enough about it. That's another part of the delivery is giving the client some examples that they can relate to. And then the last thing we do is we create what we call a Credo Statement, which is is if the, the archetype is talking, you know, what would they be saying so, five or six could be more but generally five or six statements that this avatar would state?
What do they believe what what's important to them? How do they interact, what's their role in a group, things like that, and these credos become very valuable. as well. In organizing again, what's this all about? Let's go back to that. It's about helping creatives get into the zone really quick get the vibe of the brand, and not have to keep breaking frame to go refer to some technical brand guideline or some attribute but just go with the flow. Right and really nail it. So that's what these tools are designed to do.
M: Sometimes I'll create an avatar or persona, instead of using a classic archetype. For me, that's a sort of a creative choice. Sometimes with clients, something will come to me that feels really right and evocative. Or I feel like a client for some reason is just not going to respond to the classic archetypes and it's basically the same thing. But just something that's very specific, a character that I can just hear talking in the brand voice, you know, that requires really fleshing it out.
USING ARCHETYPES TO DISCOVER PERSONALITY
E: Who is this character that doesn't have as much baggage Maybe so, you know, really giving the client enough that they can get into that character? That's a great approach, really valuable. We've done that from time to time as well. The other thing while we're on the topic of archetypes point out is that you can use archetypes as tools to discover not just roll up personality attributes into archetypes, but use archetypes to explore what a brand personality could be. So we don't do that as much. We've started to do a little bit more. We recently worked with a company where we didn't explore the personality the way we normally would, which would be in a work session where we're asking tons of questions. We're going through all their other different kinds of exercises. But we just said, Hey, look, here's 12 Different archetypes, which one feels right for you, or which ones feel right for you. And then we went in deeper into the qualities of that archetype, not the top two. Or three traits that are just kind of sketched out in the high level tables that you find when you go looking for them, but really going into a lot more depth about how the archetype works and what those qualities might be and it was super valuable for landing on a set of attributes so personality, attributes and form archetypes. archetypes can inform personality attributes, played both ways.
AN ARCHETYPE PITFALL TO AVOID
M: So are there any other risks associated with using archetypes? We talked about just the emotionality or the culture clash…
E: I think there's one huge risk. Fortunately, if you're aware of it, I think you can avoid it and you can actually use it to your advantage. And that is the risk of creating an archetype that's like, every other archetype in your category. Again, we go back to like, what are we trying to do here with the brand story brand, we're trying to help you stand out in a way that could only be you and nobody else? That's the whole point of positioning. That's the point of personality. That's the point of a lot of what we're doing and you need to be careful not to typecast the archetype. , by category, you know, and so for example, Nike is a hero brand, and I can see that , okay. Does that mean that all athletic wear brands or sport brands or heroes could be writing Yes. 10 thing right and then so so then what right so if you're using the archetype and you land there, how are you going to set yourself apart from Nike? If you're not Nike, right? How are you going to do that? And that's where I think you should be open to the non intuitive qualities or look for those added layers of personality that separate you. Maybe for example, you decide, well, we are a hero, okay. Nikes a hero and our you know, super shoe brand is a hero too. Let's go one level deeper and define the kind of hero that we are and not use that label. Right? That might be one way to go the other way to go. Might be to say, hey, you know what, there are a whole lot of heroes in this category. Everybody gets it. Why don't we be an innocent, you know, which is somebody who's just very simple and very kind and very optimistic. That might not feel intuitive, but it might be really terrific. Who knows so just be open to, you know, seeing what other options there are, besides the obvious expected archetypes for a category. One big pitfall I see that we always have to work against. , totally.
M: And if you're in a room with stakeholders, it can drive to that conclusion pretty easily. So you’ve got to kind of play devil's advocate there, at least something to be avoided.
E: But hey, look, the benefit is so great, that it's worth dealing with the pitfalls.
M: And it's sometimes the most useful thing to have those kind of awkward conversations because you you saw problems there. So that's pretty much what we wanted to cover on archetypes. We're gonna post a sample presentation of an archetype that we used actually with a client taking out obviously all the clients information, but you'll get to see everything that we include. These are always developing and changing and dependent on the client process, but this is one that's very comprehensive that we'll share with you.
E: If you're using archetypes in your work, or you have questions about archetypes further, let us know be great to keep the conversation going. Thanks a lot.
M: And we'll see you next time on the brand frontlines. Thanks.