Archetypes 101
I first became fascinated by archetypes when a spiritual friend of mine introduced me to Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth, over 20 years ago. At the time, we were both intrigued by the idea that these universal characters could have major impacts on our life paths, and how exploring their lessons could help us navigate the world at a deeper level. I became hooked on Carl Jung’s work and Bill Moyers’ PBS series.
Another thing that stuck with me was how blockbuster books and films harnessed storylines and character profiles from ancient myths. The most famous and convincing example at the time was George Lucas’ work on Star Wars. Fast forward a few years and the concept of leveraging storytelling in advertising and marketing had become mainstream.
As a corporate communication and design consultant, I helped HR clients educate employees on complex health care and retirement plans. Not exactly an exciting topic area, we used storytelling to strategically reach people. And every story relies on characters.
Part of my job as a creative director was facilitating workshops to define the face, or look and feel, of campaigns. We had a set of exercises that worked well to define aesthetic preferences, but I wanted to do more than create visually appealing media. I wanted to attract the audience’s attention and help them make good choices that would benefit them long. Since employment is essentially a relationship between the employee and the company, I turned to Archetypes to create personalities that would resonate.
Incorporating the 12 core archetypes defined by Mark and Pearson in their seminal brand psychology book The Hero and the Outlaw, I built my own workshop exercises. My goal was to identify one core and two supporting archetypes to use as a starting point to reflect each organization’s unique culture. Surprisingly, my new exercises resonated with clients right away.
A team of senior leaders in a manufacturing company told me my session was the best meeting they had ever attended. One client at a university was studying psychology and reminded me not to forget about the Shadow side of archetypes. Colleagues started asking for slide deck and embraced the whole concept. I loved how interested clients were to learn more and how willing they were to collaborate.
Over multiple sessions I started to see patterns of common combinations across clients. Inspired by Margaret Hartwell’s Archetypes in Branding Toolkit for Creatives and Strategists, I expanded my understanding beyond the core 12 Archetypes into 60 variations. When I was limited by project scope and time constraints on corporate projects, I experimented with one-on-one sessions for friends who wanted to articulate their own personal brands. That led me to develop more exercises to build brand voices and value propositions.
Somewhere along the line, an interesting shift happened: I stopped thinking about how much I could get from these sessions and started thinking about how to give my clients more. More profiles + more insights + more ah-ha moments = more fun.
That’s when I felt successful.
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