The science of Brand archetypes is not uncommon, but have you made a conscious choice of considering it and how that really applies to your brand?
Have you wondered how brand archetype might stimulate your brand positioning and communication strategy?
A general research and consensus conclude that archetypes are yet to be widely discovered and those who did have brief encounters with the subject are not very positive about the concept as a strategic tool.
The prejudice and passive attitude of most of the marketers towards brand archetypes shoots from a sheer lack of their understanding of its application. When properly implemented, however, brand archetypes have the supremacy to position your brand right to the forefront and to the center, not only in your customer’s cognizance, but strike the right cord with their emotions too.
The secret of popular brands
Most of the consumers have a deep connect with their favorite brands both on quality and emotional scale.
Think of the brands you adore. If you’re not a brand fanatic (such as the Apple brand admiration), then answer a simple question for yourself: Which is that one brand that you use that its competitor brand products cannot cut it?
If you think about it, there is surely one brand out of your collections that resonates with your personality to the T – literally synonymous to you that you won’t trade for anything. It can be your iPhone, your favorite breakfast cereals, or your Maruti car, or something else, quite specific to who you are.
The brand may vary from one product to the other you have or been using since ages but your connection with it goes simply beyond its features and benefits. Your favorite brand has created an emotional bond with you, through strategic positioning and communication.
What is it that connect you to your favorite brand
Whether you go so far as to say that you ‘love’ your favorite brands or not, you do feel an organic connection with them which is very ‘humanly’ and is based on ‘feelings’. But did you try reasoning out how can you feel human connections with an inanimate object or a company that have created mammoth brands and manufacture your favorite products?
Well, the answer lies in a simple yet uncanny fact that those brands make you feel special – it’s the way they make you feel.
Those most beloved brands are the ones that understand their audience better than their competitor brands could have. They tailor their communication (by infusing personality) to evoke the same desire within them, which their brand pleases.
It’s about what brands emote and touches your heart
Humans consider themselves the most sort after, intelligent and logical people and that our buying decisions are well judged based on our exclusive research and analysis process to make make an informed decision after comparing all the options in the market we have.
Right? Wrong.
As per Gerald Zaltman, Harvard Business School professor, “95% of our purchasing decisions are made in our subconscious. Even those who report that they actively compare competing brands, never actually consider the alternative. In other words, our decisions have been made long before we actually do the purchase.”
Desire is the mother of archetype
We all have our desires that are quite earthy or human per se. Typically we don’t like to have a logic for certain things we love, it’s instinctive. Since we as individuals are completely different from each other, each one of us has different levels of desire for different needs.
Carl Jung, a renowned psychologist, who coined the term “archetypes” said we all have a “collective unconscious” that channel experiences and emotions resulting in typical patterns of behavior.
To add on to this, there are explicit personalities that we instinctively correlate to, that evoke specific desires within each one of us.
You can have a desire for power, freedom, intimacy or more, a specific collection of behaviors (or a certain personality) will evoke those desires within you, more than others. There are 12 distinct personalities (12 Jungian archetypes), which evoke 12 key human desires. These that act as the primary colors for all personalities and desires and can be used to make strategic emotional connections.
Brands that you love are tangible
Brands that fail to establish an emotional connect with their audience are traded as mere commodities and are easily replaced by better ones or when novelty options become available with no precise memory of it, completely erased. Brands that emote your deep desire foster brand loyalty and successfully become the yardstick of branding, what we call as ‘brand advocacy’.
Establishing these connections is not a matter of non-cohesively tugging a trickle of traits you think your audience admire.
In order to draw a real connection, your brand needs to touch a human emotion. A brand that knows who it is, what it stands for, voices opinions, promotes beliefs, champions a cause or brings some life to the party is a brand with personality.
These are the brands that make connections, so their audience “feels strongly something” for them. They are alive, they inspire us, they guide us, we trust them, and, in special cases, we love.
How Can you use it in your Brand Strategy?
Concept of brand archetypes is not an addendum of the strategic branding process, it should be at the forefront of your brand, integral to your brand positioning and communication strategy.
Start with your audience, though this is where the whole clutter resides. It is not as simply as questioning which archetype bracket your audience fits in, like a multiple-choice question.
When you answer those questions, you will know your audience intimately – their aspirations, fears, desires, and expectations, you can then turn the spot light on the personality (or archetype) that will best appeal to them. Your industry and competitors will also have an influence on your position and how you would differentiate in your space.
Once you have a clarity of your competitive landscape, you will have an insight into the position you want to take, the emotion and desire you want to conjure, and which fully formed archetypal personality will help infuse life into your brand and strike the right cord with your audience.
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