SVP for Kingston Marketing Group on Creating Meaningful Relationships Using Brand Archetypes | builders podcast

0:00Archetypes give you emotional dimension to your brand, just like color does. So it's not just about consistency. It's about active creation of personality. And it's about inspiration because it'll get people thinking about new things.

0:20Marketing expert Todd Olson is on to discuss brand archetypes and what is behind some of the deliberate choices that iconic brands like North Face or Old Spice or Nike or Disney make in terms of color, content, advertising, consumer experience based on this brand archetype work. Also, maybe you're a fan of The Office, the show, and the first segment is about a contest we're doing where you can nominate the world's greatest boss and the prize is two tickets to paradise. So if you're an Office super fan, you probably get both those references. In fact, Marty, our editor-in-chief, and I had a colleague of ours, Billy Liang.

1:02He's an Office super fan. Join that first segment to discuss his favorite moments from the show, comment on the contest, and some other stuff. If you're interested in actually nominating someone for the contest, we have that detail in the show notes and also links to both the brand archetype visual that Todd and I referenced and to Kingston Marketing Group. Thanks.

1:29Okay, we've got our weekly segment with the B Newsletter crew. And we're going to talk about the show The Office. The U.S. Office made news again over the last week by being atop the streaming ratings. People are watching it as much, if not more than ever. And so we're doing a contest in promotion at business.com around The Office. and we're bringing in our colleague, Billy Liang, who's an Office super fan, to comment on the contest. We're going to ask him some questions and have a little fun. Thanks for joining, Billy. Of course. Thank you for having me. You got it. Well, Billy, the contest is the best boss in the world contest, and we're asking people to nominate their boss based on does their boss have the qualities that Michael Scott had for inspiring a team and making them feel valued and making them feel that they're bringing out their best.

2:28I guess the first question would be, did Michael Scott actually do that? Was he a good boss or was he in fact not the world's best boss? I think that he was a good boss, despite any shortcomings he may have had. Did his approach change over time? Because it seems like in the early seasons he was creating these awkward situations, but over time maybe he softened a bit and earn more loyalty? I think he was pretty much the same throughout but then there was like more character development and then also he went through a lot of I guess trial and error. He did face the scrutiny in the beginning of the series but halfway through you know he learned and then there's also these like nice moments of the show where he was able to I guess prove that he also So it's just a human being at the end of the day.

3:14So if an alien was to land on Earth and you were to show that alien one episode of The Office to show like what the funniest possible thing was to describe the office humor to the alien, what episode would you choose? Dinner party. Dinner party? Yeah. Okay. And what's the premise of that one? it's like when Michael Scott has a dinner party at his condo and he's like dating Jan full time now so then he invites a bunch of the office people like the employees to have dinner with him and the whole time him and like Jan are like basically facing off and in terms of like how they could make it as awkward as possible and then like stuff like that there's just there's just so many like scenes where it's like super super awkward where they start arguing about things and then there's one scene where he has like a like a plasma screen tv but it's like 22 inches and he's like oh this is like my livelihood and then at the end of like this the show or the episode jan like takes one of his dundies and like just throws it at like the tv it's just super chaotic i've gotta i've gotta watch that episode again i have seen that one that one is super funny.

4:30So we haven't told you about what you win. The contest is you're nominating the world's greatest boss. And if that boss wins, we're providing an all expense paid vacation to Sandals, Jamaica. Do you remember that plot in the office? I think Michael takes Jan there. What do you remember about that? And do you think that's somewhere people would want to go? for sure i think that is a place that people wouldn't want to go but the premise of that show is or that episode is that he bought two tickets to go to sandals jamaica with like his current girlfriend at the time carol which is actually his real wife in real life the person that acts yeah the actor and then um they have like this casino night event it's like their third date and he like gets on one knee and proposes to her on the third day which is crazy and she's like oh no Michael like it's only been the third day so then she dumps him he ends up going with Jan and then he like takes a weird inappropriate photo with Jan there and it accidentally distributes it around the office yeah that's the premise of that episode all right well um hopefully that doesn't happen to the winner.

5:50The winner just goes and enjoys himself or herself at Sandals Jamaica. Billy, thanks for being here.

6:05Hi, Todd. How are you? Good to see you. Great. Good to see you, John. Yeah, it was fun. We grabbed coffee, which we do every once in a while last Friday. We were talking about all kinds of interesting things, marketing. So thanks for coming on the pod. And where I wanted to start was all brands that are iconic, Apple, Gucci, Nike, Burger King, they all connect with their audience in a really deep and meaningful way. And they're all really thoughtful about how they do that, probably to build authenticity, loyalty, trust. And I know that's one of the things that you help brands with a lot think about a lot.

6:47And you also have a number of different exercises that you take brands through, like customer journey mapping or personas. But the one that I want to talk about today, which I know you're really passionate about, is brand archetypes. And maybe we can start, I can just ask you the question, what is a brand archetype? Yeah. So have you ever heard of a person by the name of Carl Jung? sort of it's like psych it's like a psychology person yeah he's i guess one of the fathers of modern psychology and psychiatry so he was actually friends with sigmund freud okay and um he he he's kind of a mystic actually he's he's a somewhat controversial guy but um he was really important in the field.

7:40And he, he had this idea called collective unconscious, which is that we share collective, like in our DNA, collectively, we share, um, personality elements and that they are, we are connected to everybody else through these shared, um, personality, uh, uh, elements, which he called archetypes. And so he created 12 distinct archetypes and things like ruler, creator, innocent, sage, explorer. And his theory was that these were all embedded into everybody at birth and that they were waiting to basically form and materialize through the other big personality factor, which is cultural experience. Basically, like you being raised by your parents, your peers, your friends, your colleagues, your life experiences.

8:39And so those two things form into your personality. And this was all done in the late 1800s, early 1900s. And it's interesting what made it relevant to marketing and branding is that some time ago, I don't know, I think it's basically open source at this point, but a really smart marketer, not us, apply brands to them. So if you, I'm looking at a color wheel right now, and I realized this is trickier for podcast media because it is visual. So I'll try and describe it a little bit. Well, also, by the way, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. We might pop it up on the YouTube version of it.

9:26But yeah. Okay. Yes. I know what you mean. I've got up in You can envision, I think most people have seen a color wheel. Yep. With like Roy G. Div, colors of the rainbow, and they're kind of bent into a circle. And it's a color wheel. And you can use this color wheel to create color palettes and like find complementary colors, like colors that are directly across from each other on the wheel are complementary, which is why you see certain color pairings in the world. and a couple smart things about this is one it maps these 12 distinct personalities and I'll I'm going to cover each one as part of this so people have an idea of kind of what the what the bones of it are but they assigned to each archetype like a brand that was this kind of this like aspirational brand that stands for the archetype so I'll give you an example so So across the wheel, I've got Magician is one of Carl Jung's archetypes.

10:32And the Magician can be described as intuitive, insightful, inspiring. And the Magician's personality purpose is to transform the ordinary into extraordinary. So you could probably imagine what lead brand is there, John. I'll put you on the spot. What's a brand? And when I say magician, transformational, turning the ordinary into the extraordinary, which brand do you think of? I'm looking at the color wheel. So I have, I have, I know, but, but I probably would have said anyway, Disney. Yeah. You know, even with, with the magic, the magic kingdom, you know, at the beginning of every movie, they've, they've, they've got their iconic castle and the, and the, you know, the magic kind of thing, thing going over it.

11:23I think that's a brand that super exemplifies what you're talking about. And they deliver, right? They deliver through their entertainment platform. They bought Pixar. And well, here's what we're getting into, like what these can do for you. But go to the park, right? They deliver on the experience. So I think it's a great example. And there's an example for each one of these. And the other interesting thing, useful, and thank you to whoever did this, I would love to buy you a coffee if you hear this podcast, is applied to the color wheel, right? So why I think this is interesting is that color conveys meaning as well.

12:09And so we now have a handy tool that gives you the personality elements and then what color maps to those personality elements. And you have this multidimensional way to help mine the elements of your particular brand personality. and you not only have this kind of North Star brand, if you were to choose, for instance, the Everyman,

12:46the brand we associate that with is IKEA, is a good example. And so you not only have this North Star brand, you're like, yeah, that is, you know, all things being equal for our brand. We identify with IKEA. but you also get these colors. And so when you do those together, and it depends on how early on you want to do it, you just get a lot of really high utility and you don't have to do... It's a low lift, right? You don't have to do a bunch of... It's not a research-driven exercise. It's a way... And so we use it for a number of different ways. So you mentioned, John, kind of our go-to. we have a lot of process.

13:32We're big on process, but we have some go-to tools and they're all actually open source. It's the facilitation is the thing for us. But we create personas, which is your customer on a page. We create a brand foundation, which is distilling your messaging and your mission statement and your value prop, your reasons to believe, the emotional territory, all on a page. We do customer journey mapping, which is mapping on a whiteboard your customer's problem and their journey in problem initiation to solving the problem and where you fit as a brand. And that becomes a basis for a marketing plan and then archetypes.

14:18So we can do all that together. You end up with this toolkit that you can use to consistently and actively build your hand in the marketplace. And I was going to go into the wheel, and one of the things that I thought was really cool, there's one of the archetypes is called the jester. And the canonical example here is Old Spice. and and that's a brand that's really really true to that and when when they started their jester campaign um it feels like it's 10 or 15 years old it doesn't feel like old spice was perpetually like this that it it may it may have been but um but as a series of campaigns where a man you know a guy would be like a horse and a man and and like you know men you know you Men have skin, too.

15:22And all these really funny, tongue-in-cheek type commercials. I think Burger King, actually, which I mentioned before, is kind of like that as well. To me, anyway. Yeah. Well, it gives you a counterpoint in the marketplace. That's one of the uses of this. So I don't think, like my grandfather used Old Spice. So when I smell Old Spice, I think of my grandfather. So it just has different meaning for me. I love their campaign and they've embraced it and they own it, right? They now have brand association with Jester and they have permission to embrace and perpetuate that archetype in the marketplace.

16:07And they kind of own it, right? If you were a new player, you might stay away from that space because it's kind of owned, right? People would confuse you with Old Spice if you tried to do what they're doing and they're using archetypes to do it. And archetypes allow you to codify it too. So it's not just... It could be that... I think they've been going for close to a decade now. Five, six, seven, eight years. It could be that an agency came to them with this campaign. but since they've been consistent with it, they own it now and it's part of their archetype DNA. And so I would imagine that they would not only continue to do that, but they would look for opportunities to do that.

16:59And it might even make its way onto their product roadmap, who they partner with, who their distributors are, who they partner with on the influencer side. So naming it as the first part and then thinking, how can we go further with this is the second part. And that's where it becomes active. You know, I also wonder, as you were saying this, I was thinking about big competitive categories. So in the wireless space, Verizon's red, AT &T is blue, consumer cellular's orange, T-Mobile's magenta. And then you have insurance, all states blue, state farms red. I know I'm leaving Liberty Mutual's yellow.

17:47I'm sure there's some deliberateness to saying we've got to be different. different but if you were someone new entering in the market how would you how would you think like your brand new wireless provider how would you think about trying to craft who you are versus those in the space so you definitely want to intentionally look at the people in the space because you don't want to um you don't want to tread on right you want to carve out your own space for sure to your point and so you want to be aware of who the players are and kind of what their go-to-market what their brand is made of and then you can borrow because they don't own so you think about the color blue right color blue conveys control and trust and which is why it's so popular um in loyalty competence those are the the meaning that the conveyance meanings of the color blue.

18:52And so it's become kind of a touchstone color. And so I would want to, if we were doing this workshop with them, I would start with archetypes and start with personality. And I'd say, I would go through the list together and we can even do this, John, if you want. But if they felt that trust was an important part of their brand, then they might choose the sage, for example, or even the ruler, right? The ruler is a high confidence archetype. And that gives you blue, but you don't want to just be blue. Otherwise, you're not going to stand out. And so how I would use this in a complimentary way is I would say, we always want to pick one primary archetype, just like you would color, right?

19:47It's very, very similar. learn. You also want to have a couple of accent colors because that's what gives dimension. And that's what creates tension and interest for your brand. Because if you just pick one, it's going to be frankly, very boring in the marketplace. And it's going to be one dimensional and there's going to be no differentiation. You actually want to give your social media team or your internal writers or your agency, you want to give them a little tension because that's where interesting things happen. So for every blue, I want an accent color. And that's actually where we start with archetypes is, and I think this is the most interesting thing, is when you go through the exercise, you pick your primary and then you say, okay, what are our accent archetypes?

20:38and you're looking for things that are already there, you can also think about your customers. You can do a look back and say like, what are the things we've created as a brand that have resonated for us or that have resonated with our customers? Or maybe it's founder-led or maybe you are being opportunistic. Maybe an agency found this in a campaign and you're like, you know what? That really is us. And so you find your accent colors and then the three together make up your archetype wheel and you map them on a color wheel. And this is what's interesting to me, as always happens, is we almost always duplicate the existing color wheel of the brand.

21:25It was already there. And or a founder will say to me, this was our original color palette. Interesting. Isn't that interesting? So whether or not it was subconscious or whatever. Yeah, or unconscious, whatever. Collective unconscious, maybe. Maybe Carl was right. Yeah, and also you wonder if there's a little bit, if it's true, we all have these 12 personality types and they just manifested themselves. You know, the color choice brought the type of customer that ended up being your ideal customer. It was almost like, was it causation or correlation? Yeah, that's a very interesting question. I want to ask kind of an investment question.

22:13When is it the best time or when is it a good time to really think about these things? Is it like, is it A, you know, we're going to redo our website? Is it B, we're trying to grow in this way, or we want to connect with customers, or we want to solve this customer issue? When is it most valuable in your mind to conduct an exercise like this? I think now. It's never too late. I think it would always be helpful. I think it's excellent if you're kicking off a rebrand or if you're starting a brand. If you haven't, because when you start a brand, part of your toolkit is you'll create a logo, you'll create key messaging, you'll create some of the things that we talked about earlier.

23:10With the logo, right? Don't just create a logo. you create a color palette, you create typefaces, and you pull them together in a visual style guide, which are kind of like the guidelines so that you don't break the rules. Like if your typeface is Helvetica, Futura, and somebody comes, you know, an agency would create something for you that is Comic Sans, right? That would be a problem. It would always be a problem if it were Comic Sans, but it's a problem. The same is true for personality because you want your writers writing with a consistent voice and you want to always be thinking about the emotional territory because that's actually where the action is.

23:56And archetypes give you emotional dimension to your brand, just like color does. um so it's not it's not just about consistency it's about active you know um creation of personality and it's about inspiration because it'll get people thinking about new things so you can do it at any time um and it's not a heavy lift the heavy lift is actually um putting it to use and it's discipline right like the gym membership is free uh you have to go to the gym uh and then and then you're you know that's the cost is really um are you willing to to to be disciplined you proposed to me off offline or or offered of i'm actually doing kind of a real-time exercise like this on on the brand that this podcast is related to which is business.com and also the newsletter um the b newsletter i don't know what what do you say?

24:59Should we try this in real time? We're not exactly in the process of a rebrand, but we are trying to hone in on who we connect with. I'm talking about the actual website, which has, yeah, let's do it. So how do we start? I thought this might come up. So I went there earlier. I spent a little time on the site. Thank you. I think there's a little bit of opportunity. So I think we should start by, if you feel it's okay, I could do a quick rundown of the archetypes. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. All right. So there are 12. There are 12. But as I'm running them down, do people want to know what business.com is?

25:41Maybe give the elevator pitch real quick. Yeah. So business.com provides advice and recommendations on how to grow your business. And that can involve advice for editorial content and all these different stages of business, whether you're trying to diversify, reinvent yourself, manage a crisis, or research and select a product and service that'll help your business, whether it's a credit card processor, HR software, or whatever. One question we would often ask is if there's a center bullseye type of business owner that you feel just fits perfectly. Understanding there's always a range, right? But who do you imagine being the best customer for this?

26:30Do they have a size? We think so. So there are 11 million businesses between$50 ,000 and$50 million in revenue. So the site, the site isn't, isn't, um, it's not for Amazon. It's not, it's not for Amazon. Exactly. It's not for, it's not for, uh, somebody who's incubating an ID, although I'm sure we have, we have a bunch of stuff that is helpful there. And it's not really about like, um, tech startups or the VC world, but it's for these, these 11 million businesses between 50 ,000, 50 million that make up a really significant chunk of our economy and tens of millions of jobs. So that's, that's who we think, uh, the site helps.

27:17Okay. Okay. So like, um, maybe like, uh, uh, a retailer, a small retailer or. Okay. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Even a big retailer. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Okay. So let's think about somebody, somebody in that zone. Um, okay. And, and so when we're thinking through these, Listen for what you know about the brand. You've been connected to the brand for a long time. You've seen it come to life. You're in the day-to-day. You're seeing the content come across. You're seeing how it's resonating with your customers. You're actually connecting it to real customers, getting feedback. And so think, is it hidden for you as I'm reading some of these?

28:08Okay. So the first one is the creator. So this is naturally expressive, original, and imaginative. The creator wishes to see new ideas take shape and see visions realized. You'll see this with a lot of technology brands and Apple and Lego are good examples of creators. The next one is caregiver, compassionate, nurturing, dedicated. Their purpose in life is to help others. So a lot of protection, safety, support. Brands, American Red Cross, Four Seasons, Make-A-Wish Foundation. Okay. The ruler, confident, confident, responsible. Ruler aims to be a role model to others. Porsche, Rolex, Mercedes-Benz, FedEx, ruler brands.

29:05Then every man, which I've been calling people person, naturally empathetic, unpretentious, resilient. Their purpose is to be accepted and to belong. This is great for brands known for reliability and quality, trust, Subway, Walmart, Toyota, Ikea. The innocent, which are idealistic, optimistic, hopeful, wishes to live life in harmony. Wholesome, fun, wellness are words that are used to describe innocent brands. Some brands are Burt's Bees, Toms of Maine, and Crayola. Explorer, naturally independent, authentic, curious. This archetype craves freedom and adventure with marketing campaigns, like risk-taking, travel, ambitious innovation.

30:04Brands are Land Rover, Jeep, Airbnb, North Face. Okay. We can come back to these. You don't have to remember them all. I'm tracking. Tracking. Okay. Okay. And then the magician, which we talked about. Disney. Tony's Choco Lonely. Dyson

30:26transform the ordinary to extraordinary like we said, make dreams come true turn problems into opportunities a lot of great territory there the rebel also known as the outlaw unconventional thinkers who can develop new cutting edge approaches rebel's purpose in life is to shake up the status quo action oriented brands um harley davidson virgin airlines doc martin's red bull okay the next is the entertainer aka jester playful spontaneous humorous the entertainer aims to make people feel good lighten the mood and enjoy themselves um fun loving uh geico makes sense almost any beer brands uh old spice um just going back to rebel we we had a client called act on who is a marketing automation platform and they just they had a little bit of it in their dna but they embraced it and just ran with it their whole content plan like just they sent it and it transformed how they show up by the way so i've just as i read rebel it just reminded me like this can be transformational if you really go for it okay so i'm moving on to the hero determined achievement oriented and focused hero's purpose in life is to improve the world.

32:01Nike, Gatorade.

32:08Moving on to the Sage, intelligent, knowledgeable, reflective. Sage seeks to find answers to questions. Educational research brands, good fit. But Google, TED Talks, BBC, HubSpot is probably my best in class example of the sage. And everything they do is sage plus, right? So the plus is where it gets really interesting to me. And then the lover is the final one. This is a misunderstood archetype. So I'll read appreciative, passionate, committed lovers. purpose in life is to make people feel special um let's see what else aesthetically beautiful so this is a connector brand so a lot of people think of um godiva chocolate or victoria's secret when they think about the lover but it's not it's not a brand that's about it's not a sex brand it's not a love it's a it's actually about connecting um and so when when we read the whole thing and we kind of open it up, a lot of our clients actually choose the lever because they are about connection.