It has become standard for marketing and communications pros to spin psychologist Carl Jung’s wheel of archetypes, hoping to land on an appropriate story model for their brand. That’s great. But here’s how to level up — the real marketing objective should be to become your own archetype, right?
The most famous brand archetype success of all time is also the most documented.
Everything we experience in life is imprinted into our memories, and becomes a part of our subconscious mind. Some experiences are commonly held across all of humanity, as they describe common aspects of the human journey in a single idea or image, and when these common experiences are then depicted in art or literature, which has occurred thousands of times across different cultures, then these fundamental folksy ideas are called archetypes.
Whereas the brand personality uses adjectives to describe the brand as if it were a person, the brand archetype, based on Jungian archetypes, indicates the brand’s driving force or motivation. Several books describe brand archetypes. Two of my favorites are: (1) The Hero and he Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes by Margaret Mark & Carol S. Pearson and (2) Winning the Story Wars: Why those who tell – and live –...
Archetypes in product branding are nothing new. The Jungian-based psychology behind the use of archetypes began in earnest shortly after World War II. Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, also conceptualized the theories of archetypes and the collective unconscious. His theories certainly seem to have great merit, given their unparalleled success when applied to consumer marketing and product branding.
