What is a brand archetype?

Psychologist Carl Jung introduced archetypes in the 1960s and believed they represented universal patterns of human behavior and experience. Jung believed that archetypes were innate, universal, unlearned, and hereditary concepts from the collective unconscious. These archetypes organize how we experience certain things and symbolize basic human motivations, values, and personalities.

So, if we apply that simplified explanation to modern marketing, it basically means your brand’s archetype is the underlying personality and values that your brand embodies. It’s the essence of your brand, and it provides guidelines on how your brand interacts with your audience and can even help you connect with your audience on a deeper level.

(Sidenote: In their book The Hero and The Outlaw (2002), Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson popularized the modern-day archetypes we use for brand voice and marketing today.)

Why your brand’s archetype makes your content marketing scroll-stopping and how to determine yours

Brand archetypes help you create a more compelling and authentic brand identity and messaging for your website copy and content marketing. By embodying a specific set of values, traits, and emotions, you can establish a deeper emotional connection with your audience, increasing brand loyalty, higher engagement rates, and, ultimately, increased revenue (yay!).

So, determining your brand archetype ensures that you aren’t creating content for the sake of creating content. All your content marketing for your small business will be written with purpose and a solid framework that aligns with your ideal audience.

Your content marketing “strategy” will finally actually be a strategy.

There are 12 Jungian archetypes that brands can embody, including the Innocent, the Explorer, the Sage, the Hero, the Outlaw, the Magician, the Everyman, the Lover, the Jester, the Caregiver, the Creator, and the Ruler.

To identify your brand’s archetype, consider the following questions:

What is your origin story?
Who do you want to help? Who is your ideal customer?
What do you want to accomplish?
What are the core values of your brand?
What is your unique selling proposition?
What is the tone of your brand? Is it serious, playful, or somewhere in between?
What emotions do you want to evoke in your audience?
How do you want others to describe your brand?
What are your current customers saying about your brand?

You might feel like your brand fits into one or more of the following 12 archetypes, and that’s okay. These aren’t hard and fast rules. You might even disagree with how I’ve categorized the brands, people, and characters in each archetype.

So, you can make your archetype(s) yours, and if you follow the brand archetype framework, you can easily weave those stories into your copy to create better content marketing for your small business.

The 12 Brand Archetypes

THE INNOCENT

The Innocent brand archetype represents purity, simplicity, and optimism. They focus on being transparent and honest. They create an open dialogue with customers, communicate their ethical practices, and keep things simple.

Integrating the Innocent archetype into your content marketing strategy involves designing campaigns that showcase warmth, simplicity, and togetherness. You can highlight transparency and ethical practices and foster trust by thoughtfully engaging with your community.

Brand promise: Safety, belonging, optimism

Brand voice: Warm, inviting, simple, honest, friendly, familiar

Brand fears: Over complication, being punished for doing something wrong, loss of trust, breach of ethical morals and values

Brand archetype examples: Dove, McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson, The Honest Company, Forrest Gump, Buddy (Elf)

THE SAGE

The Sage brand archetype represents wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. They focus on sharing their expertise by being transparent about their processes. They emphasize the practical benefits of their products or services and balance their vast knowledge with clear, understandable, and inclusive language.

By sharing your expertise, being transparent, and using precise language, your Sage brand can build credibility and trust with your audience, and by fostering intellectual curiosity and empowering your customers, your Sage brand can deepen engagement and build true brand loyalty.

Brand promise: Growth, guidance, empowerment, intellectual, trust

Brand voice: Thought-provoking, insightful, curious, authoritative, engaging

Brand fears: Willful ignorance, being duped, stagnation, loss of credibility

Brand archetype examples: Google, TED, Discovery Channel, Gandolf, Oprah

THE EXPLORER

The Explorer brand archetype represents a desire for adventure, discovery, and independence. They focus on pushing boundaries without challenging them and love to take the road less traveled. They are your personal guide to finding yourself and a more authentic lifestyle.

The Explorer archetype is an easy choice for an outdoorsy brand. However, even if you have a non-outdoorsy brand, you can still use the concept of exploration to create a narrative that emphasizes the journey of self-discovery and the ultimate destination of personal fulfillment, which can be particularly effective for products or services related to spiritual wellness or personal development.

Brand promise: Ambitious, inspiring, healing, adventure, opportunity

Brand voice: Youthful, passionate, energetic, enthusiastic, authentic

Brand fears: Boredom, conformity, feeling empty, stuck or trapped

Brand archetype examples: Jeep, Patagonia, REI, The Body Shop, Lily Houghton

THE OUTLAW

The Outlaw brand archetype represents rebellion, nonconformity, and breaking the rules. They are free spirits, daring risk-takers, and want to be known for changing the world. They fear conformity, powerlessness, and oppression above all else.

By crafting bold messaging, embracing what makes you different, and challenging the status quo, you will resonate with the Outlaw’s ideal audience. You’ll need to capture the Outlaw’s rebellious spirit in your messaging to communicate this archetype effectively. So don’t be afraid to break the rules and really show your brand’s personality.

Brand promise: Liberation, innovation, nonconformist, rebellion, unconventional advocate

Brand voice: Spicy, disruptive, rule-breaking, edgy, bold, real

Brand fears: Powerlessness, ineffectual, having no purpose

Brand archetype examples: Harley Davidson, Dr. Martens, Greenpeace, Moana, SDN (yes, even me 🙋🏽‍♀️)

THE MAGICIAN

The Magician brand archetype represents transformation, wonder, and the ability to make the impossible happen. They are enchanting, imaginative, and charismatic. They focus on transformation and positive change, making them ideal for audiences seeking empowerment and personal growth. But sometimes, they have so many ideas that it’s hard for them to stay focused at all.

So, if your brand embodies the Magician archetype, you must balance your ability to inspire and transform with a grounded approach that addresses the practical needs of your audience while sustaining your credibility and reliability.

Brand promise: Transformation, unlocking inner power, a sense of wonder, visionary

Brand voice: Expertise, wisdom, an air of mystery, enchanting, imaginative, charismatic

Brand fears: Negative consequences, disillusionment, inability to inspire, dishonest

Brand archetype examples: Disney, Tesla, Red Bull, Polaroid, Prince

THE HERO

The Hero brand archetype represents courage, strength, and the desire to save the day. They focus on their positive impact on the world and strive to be seen as a champion for their customers.

To connect with their audience, hero brands craft relatable storylines that highlight their benefits and align with their customers’ goals. By connecting with their customers’ pain points and swooping in as the hero in their narrative, hero brands create a sense of empowerment and motivation for their audience.

The challenge for your Hero brand is to maintain reliability and accessibility. If a hero brand voice is too “savior-like,” it might be off-putting for the audience and cause them to be skeptical of your brand’s offering, making it feel like the offering is too good to be true.

Brand promise: Mastery, competence, inspires courage, conquers challenges, unwavering dedication

Brand voice: Confident, resilient, strong, encouraging, bold

Brand fears: Weakness, vulnerability, losing trust, defeat

Brand archetype examples: Nike, FedEx, The Red Cross, Iron Man

THE LOVER

The Lover archetype represents intimacy, passion, and emotional connection. Brands embodying this archetype focus on creating meaningful connections with their audience, emphasizing the importance of emotional and sensual experiences. The challenge for brands embodying the Lover archetype is to balance their desire to make their audience feel special without causing their audience to become overly dependent on them.

Brand promise: Connection, passion, intimacy, luxury, high-end, aesthetic

Brand voice: Emotionally competent, passionate, warm, affectionate, sensitive, caring, empathetic

Brand fears: Disconnection, apathy, isolation, becoming a wallflower, rejection

Brand archetype examples: Dior, Chanel, Hallmark, Jack Dawson, Edward Cullen, Princess Anna of Arendelle

THE JESTER

The Jester brand archetype represents humor, playfulness, and bringing joy to others. They leverage their carefree spirit to help consumers feel liberated from societal constraints and encourage them to embrace their inner child. They also need to maintain reliability, credibility, and professionalism without getting lost in chasing virality.

With your Jester brand, you can highlight the spontaneous nature/benefit of your products or services to show how exciting and fun it is to try new things and take risks. You can talk about sensitive or taboo topics in a funny or lighthearted way, making people feel more comfortable and really connect with your brand’s message.

Brand promise: Spontaneity, authenticity, relatable, entertainment

Brand voice: Fun, lighthearted, playful, humorous, witty, approachable

Brand fears: Being bored or boring others, becoming irrelevant

Brand archetype examples: Geico, Old Spice, DollarShave Club, Olaf

THE EVERYMAN

The Everyman brand archetype represents relatability, practicality, and affordability. They are down-to-earth and approachable characters that are modeled after regular people. They embody the ideals of hard work, honesty, and authenticity and value common sense over luxury or status symbols. They tend to be welcoming and inviting and speak in a conversational voice.

As an Everyman brand, you want your audience to feel as though they belong. They see themselves in your Everyman brand and want to be accepted. Your Everyman brand relies heavily on trust-building elements such as money-back guarantees and social media to become even more relatable, transparent, and helpful to your customers. The challenge for your Everyman brand is to avoid being too generic, or worse, forgettable.

Brand promise: Belonging, practical, reliable, affordable, honest

Brand voice: Empathetic, down-to-earth, humble, grounded, kind, relatable, accepting, compassionate

Brand fears: being left out, becoming the center of attention, alienation

Brand archetype examples: Ikea, Home Depot, Ford, Levi, Jim Halpert, Peter Parker, Trevor Noah

THE CAREGIVER

The Caregiver archetype represents compassion, selflessness, and service. They have a strong desire to serve others and go out of their way for the greater good. They exhibit parental tendencies and prioritize taking care of others in the best possible way. Simple acts of kindness are not enough for them, as they are motivated to self-sacrifice and take control of situations to make them better for those involved.

By embracing the Caregiver archetype, you can create a brand experience that truly nurtures and uplifts your audience, making a meaningful difference in their lives. The challenge for your Caregiver brand will be to strike a balance between caring for others and being mindful of potential pitfalls such as martyrdom or exploitation.

Brand promise: Ethical, generosity, support, protection, service, trustworthy

Brand voice: Nurturing, supportive, helpful, reassuring, inclusive, compassionate

Brand fears: Neglect, harm, selfishness, inadequacy

Brand archetype examples: Pampers, Dove, Unicef, Mrs. Potts, Marlin (Finding Nemo)

THE CREATOR

The Creator archetype represents imagination, innovation, and the desire to bring something new into the world. They use imagery related to art, design, or innovation and focus on inspiring others to be completely original and unapologetic in creative expression. They fear being mediocre and unoriginal in their work.

Your Creator brand takes pride in bringing new ideas into existence and finds fulfillment in the creative process and outcome. You typically thrive as a nonconformist who desires freedom of expression and dislikes creative restrictions. The act of creating something tangible that previously did not exist is at the core of the Creator archetype, providing a sense of control in an otherwise unpredictable world.

Brand promise: Creativity, imagination, innovation, self-expression, visionary, artistic, experimental, sparking curiosity

Brand voice: Inspiring, daring, bold, creative, progressive, impactful, memorable

Brand fears: Mediocrity, unoriginality, narcissism

Brand archetype examples: Apple, Adobe, Squarespace, GoPro, Pinterest, Hero Hamada, Dr. Emmett Brown

THE RULER

The Ruler archetype represents authority, power, and the ability to lead. The Ruler archetype is the opposite of the Outlaw archetype, as it aims to prevent chaos by taking control. They seek to gain and maintain power and view themselves as role models and leaders.

Your Ruler brand often uses imagery related to luxury, wealth, or sophistication. The challenge for your Ruler brand is to provide structure without being ruthless or power-hungry and not to become so exclusive that you are considered elitist.

Brand promise: Power, strategy, sophistication, wealth, exclusivity, superiority, rare, structure, excellence

Brand voice: Confidence, meticulous, authoritative, decisive, influential

Brand fears: Chaos, powerlessness, being dethroned

Brand archetype examples: Mercedes, American Express, T’Challa, Mufasa

Now you can use your brand archetypes to write powerful stories in your content marketing…

To create effective content that actually lands with your audience, consistently and authentically incorporate your archetype into all aspects of your brand’s messaging and visual identity.

Identifying which archetype(s) best align with your brand’s values and personality is the first step in using brand archetypes in your content marketing.

Once you have identified your brand’s archetype(s), you can use storytelling to bring the archetype to life, create an emotional connection with your audience, and work on solving (or helping them with) their primary pain points to create waaayyy better content marketing strategy for your small business.

And as always, I’m here if you need me — we can nail down your unique selling proposition, determine your brand archetype, write website copy that actually feels like you (and actually resonates with your audience), and create some 🔥🔥🔥 content marketing for your small business.

Ready to redefine what it means to be a nurse and scale the business of your dreams with connection-worthy copy?

LET’S DO THIS THING

Brand Archetypes for Better Content Marketing

What is a brand archetype?

Why your brand’s archetype makes your content marketing scroll-stopping and how to determine yours

The 12 Brand Archetypes

Now you can use your brand archetypes to write powerful stories in your content marketing…

More scroll-stopping content…

Brand Archetypes for Better Content Marketing

What is a brand archetype?

Why your brand’s archetype makes your content marketing scroll-stopping and how to determine yours

The 12 Brand Archetypes

Now you can use your brand archetypes to write powerful stories in your content marketing…

More scroll-stopping content…

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