Brand Archetypes

What it is

Familiar characters from stories, such as the Innocent, the Explorer, the Sage, the Hero, the Outlaw, the Magician, the Lover, the Jester and the Caregiver, used to settle the role a brand plays in people's lives so that what it does reads as one personality. The nearest tested ideas are brand personality, which Jennifer Aaker measured on five dimensions, and resonance to archetypes in media, which Faber and Mayer found falls into five clusters.

In effect

In the article on brand archetypes, it is the subject itself, described with invented and category examples.

What it does not say

It is a framework for brand strategy, not a tested effect on sales. The research on archetypes in media did not test brands, and it does not show that adopting an archetype makes a brand succeed.

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