See how tapping into universal desires through brand archetypes builds deep emotional connections with your audience.
When it comes to understanding your customers, the go-to method for many businesses is to create detailed customer avatars. Avatars often focus on what makes each customer type unique using their specific behaviours, personal challenges, and lifestyle choices. You might have come across popular avatars like “Stressed Suzie” or “Debbie Downer,” representing a clear and detailed picture of one type of customer.
While this approach may seem helpful at first, it can actually make your marketing more complicated and less effective.
A better approach is to use customer archetypes. With archetype marketing, instead of creating endless avatars based on individual situations and problems, we group customers based on their shared emotional values regardless of their individual stressors and differences.
By using the common ground shared by millions of people, you can effortlessly create a powerful message that speaks directly to the hearts of all potential customers who share the same emotional triggers. This technique lets you deliver a loud, singular message to a large and focused audience, which ultimately makes your marketing clearer, more effective, and easier to manage.
What’s The Problem with Avatars?
Avatars are designed to differentiate your customers based on situations and details that make them unique. While this can give you a sense of who they are individually, it also creates complexity. You can end up creating a long list of highly specific avatars that lead to fragmented messaging. As you try to speak to each unique persona, your brand voice gets stretched, and your messaging starts to feel disjointed.
For example, you may create one avatar for “Stressed Suzie,” who is overwhelmed by family life, and another for “Debbie Downer,” who’s frustrated with her career. While this might seem like a good way to tailor your marketing, the reality is that focusing too much on individual differences can cause you to speak past people.
The more avatars you create, the harder it becomes to maintain a consistent brand message. Trying to cater to everyone individually means you run the risk of not connecting with anyone. You might end up with so many different messages that none of them land on listening ears.
Archetypes Focus on Common Ground
Archetypes take a broader, more universal approach to understanding customers at an emotional level. Rather than identifying the individual traits, characteristics, and stressors that make each customer’s situation unique, archetypes identify the shared desires and core motivations that unite people. These desires are rooted in just twelve overarching character types, making archetypes particularly effective at building emotional connections across your various products and services.
The twelve archetypes used in branding are based on Carl Jung’s psychological principles and represent fundamental human drives, like the Caregiver, who loves to nurture, or the Explorer, who craves freedom and discovery. By tapping into these common patterns, archetypes allow you to predict how certain types of people will respond to emotional triggers.
Instead of developing limitless avatars with fragmented messages, you can focus on one deep-seated emotional driver that best represents your dream clients. This creates a richer, more cohesive brand experience while ensuring your message resonates with a large pool of potential customers.
Here are the 12 archetypes and the core motivations they represent:
- The Innocent: Looks for happiness and simplicity. Innocent is drawn to brands that offer safety, positivity, and peace of mind.
- The Explorer: Craves adventure and freedom. Explorers resonate with brands that represent discovery and independence.
- The Sage: Values truth and knowledge. Sage connects with brands that offer wisdom and intellectual growth.
- The Hero: Motivated by achievement and overcoming challenges. Heroes are inspired by brands that push them to be their best.
- The Outlaw: Challenges the status quo. Outlaws are drawn to brands that challenge norms and embrace nonconformity.
- The Magician: Seeks transformation. Magicians are attracted to brands that promise to unlock potential and inspire wonder.
- The Everyman: Wants a sense of belonging. This regular guy or gal loves brands that feel relatable and down-to-earth.
- The Lover: Yearns for intimacy and connection. Lovers resonate with brands that evoke passion, beauty, and emotional engagement.
- The Jester: Seeks fun and playfulness. Jesters are drawn to brands that offer joy and a light-hearted approach to life.
- The Caregiver: Wants to nurture and protect. Caregivers resonate with brands that embrace compassion and care.
- The Ruler: Values control and stability. Rulers are drawn to brands that represent leadership, power, and responsibility.
- The Innovator: Driven by creativity and self-expression. Innovators look for brands that provide tools for improvement and originality.
Brand archetypes let you create clear messaging that feels personal yet resonates with a broad audience, which is often more effective than addressing the surface-level differences individually.
What Are the Benefits of Using Customer Archetypes over Avatars in Brand Messaging?
When you speak to an avatar, you’re hoping the person fits into a box you’ve created for them. Some “Debbie Downers” in your customer pool may experience some commonalities with your “Debbie Downer” avatar, but this is nearly always luck of the draw. If you’ve got anything in your specific avatar incorrect, then all the Debbies that are only partly “Debbie Downers” won’t listen to you, and everybody else won’t even know you’re there. This may cause your business to become stuck with the “potluck” customers who don’t fully understand why they need you.
In sharp contrast, brand messaging that’s written for a customer archetype speaks to a shared emotional drive, which appeals to a wide cross-section of people. For example, if your emotional driver is freedom, then your message about adventure will resonate with everybody who craves freedom, regardless of whether they’re a “Debbie Downer” who is struggling at work, or a “Stressed Suzie” who is overwhelmed with family life, or somebody else entirely.
Using customer archetypes over avatars in your brand messaging brings several clear benefits:
The overall result of the archetype approach is a customer base that’s filled with perfectly aligned people who truly understand your brand values.
How Archetypes Guide Your Marketing Strategy
Archetypes are successfully used by many of the world’s biggest brands, like Nike and Apple, but this approach is also particularly effective in small businesses where resources are carefully allocated with little room for trial and error.
By using customer archetypes to inform every part of your brand from your brand story to your brand's look and feel and the social media content you publish, you can refine your marketing strategy to be both simpler and more effective. Start by identifying which archetypes resonate most with your ideal clients, then align your brand personality, brand style, and sales messaging with these core desires to create a brand that your dream customers are hardwired to love.
The key is to create marketing material that consistently taps into these emotional drivers, no matter where your customers are in their journey. For example, if your clients are predominantly driven by The Caregiver archetype, your messaging should highlight how your product or service makes a positive impact on their lives and the lives of others. If you’re appealing to The Sage, you’ll want to focus on how your brand empowers knowledge and learning.
Conclusion
At its core, marketing is about connection. Avatars focus on traits and situations that make customers different. This can lead to limitless individual customer avatars being created, which fragments your message and makes it harder to form strong connections.
Archetypes, on the other hand, are about what your customers have in common. They tap into the universal desires and deep-seated motivations that unite people with shared emotional needs. By focusing on common ground, customer archetypes let you craft a singular message that is simple, powerful, and consistent.
Not only will this make your marketing more effective, but it will also free you from the complexity of constantly trying to create and manage multiple avatars. With archetypes, you can focus on delivering a clear, emotionally resonant message that builds trust and loyalty with a large audience.
Ultimately, the brand archetype approach saves time and money on marketing. It fills your customer pool with dream clients who are naturally attracted to your brand and ready to become your most loyal advocates.
