How to find your ideal archetype?

Archetypes are one of the most interesting subjects within the marketing market, not just in digital, but it is in this field where we can have more use of your brand’s ideal archetype, but to know which one and how to use it, you need to go through a process of intense research. It’s not enough to open a Google image, choose the archetype that you find most interesting for your company, finding the archetype is complex, but when you arrive at the ideal one, you can be sure that your finance department will be happy.

According to Carl Jung’s studies, we work in marketing, with 12 archetypes. Coincidentally the number of months in the year, but the archetype has nothing to do with a horoscope, at least in this line that I am addressing here, in the field of marketing and brands. One or two of these 12 archetypes is ideal for your brand, you just need a few steps to find it, and reinforcing it is not so simple.

In my projects, I use 6 steps to reach the ideal archetype for the brands I work with. Briefly, I will go through each of them here to inspire you, who may or may not use these steps. It’s up to you.

Normally I do research with internal and external audiences. These are the first 2 steps of the 6 mentioned above. There is a basic question that I ask to find the archetype, but I don’t just ask these, I place the questionnaire among other questions. The question is “if the brand were a person, which phrase best represents it?”. I do this because if “in your view, is the brand a Lover, a Hero or an Outlaw?” Consumers won’t know what that means and will either respond or not respond at all.

The questionnaire we sent is the one below, the sentence at the top is that of the questionnaire, below is the archetype related to the sentence.

– Life can be simpler

Innocent

– Want to disseminate knowledge

Wise

– Enjoy challenges, encourage the search for new directions

Explorer

– Avoids rules and standards and doesn’t care about other people’s opinions

Outlaw

– Without knowing it was impossible, go there and do it

Dry

– Honor, victory and triumph

Hero

– Sensory, with romantic vision

Lover

– Fun and impulsive

Jester of the Court

– Community sense of belonging to a group

Common person

– Take care of others, generate trust and empathy

Helpful

– Controls and determines what is good for people

Ruler

– Self-expression, leaves a tangible legacy

Creator

Listening to people from the company and consumers, phases 1 and 2, it’s time to move to a more academic side. Step 3 has to do with academic study, reading books, watching websites, blogs, videos and lectures on the topic. Here it will help you better base your choice on the ideal archetype for the brand you are working with.

Phase 4 and 5 is to analyze the market and competition. In phase 4 you need to look at how the segment is working with the archetype. For example, if you are a business school, looking at between 5 and 10 brands to evaluate which archetypes they are working on and how, analyzing campaigns and digital content to bring which and how they are being worked, this is important, even for you. not using the archetype in the same way as the competition, using the same thing, there’s no way, it’s part of it, but there are several ways to tell the same story.

In phase 5, look at the benchmark, that is, which brands use that archetype. There are several segments that can use the same archetype, for example, the lover/seducer archetype is widely used in the fashion segment, but chocolate brands such as Koppenhagen and Cacau Show also use it. It is worth analyzing campaigns from outside the country to inspire.

The 6th step is to use the empathy map to locate the ideal archetype. The empathy map is important to put employees in the customers’ shoes and bring their perception of how people buy. At this point, the behavior will be presented, whether customers are more talkative, more serious, more informed and this can be input for you to find the ideal archetype.

Do these 6 steps. This is something that takes a few months, it’s not overnight, it’s not something that can be done quickly and anyway, even if you do all this there is a chance that, when you start running the campaigns, you will understand that this archetype does not It’s ideal, it happens, but taking these steps minimizes error, and from the field of strategy, that’s what we should do.

*Felipe Morais is Director of FM Consultoria em Planning and author of the books Digital Strategic Planning (Ed. Saraiva Uni), To the Master with affection, O SPFC da Era Telê (Ed. Inova), Digital Transformation, How digital innovation can help your business in the coming years (Ed. Saraiva Uni), Brand planning in the digital environment (DVS Editora), Brand Canvas (DVS Editora), Metaverso (Benvirá Editora) and Marvin, a winner (Grupo Editorial Atlântico).