Living in a digitally powered world, social media presence is critical for the success of your brand.
Did you know that you only have a few seconds to capture the attention of your audience? How can this possibly be done? By creating compelling social media captions and content based on your brand identity!
Not sure what your brand identity is? Brand archetypes can help you establish a brand identity, making social media captions and campaigns much more powerful.
The 12 Brand Archetypes
You are probably wondering what brand archetypes are. They are actually quite simple, however they are founded on actual psychological research by Carl Jung.
Jung found that there are 12 different types of archetypes that humans relate to. These are primitive, unconscious, and universal symbols that are understood by every human.
These archetypes are actually all around you! Archetypes are designed to build a deeper connection to your audience. So it is not surprising that archetypes are used in literature, film, and even branding, like with YOUR social media content.
Just like every human relates to one of the 12 archetypes, every brand does too. This means that your brand will relate closely to a specific archetype. Using this archetype as a method of storytelling, your brand can easily convey its brand purpose to the right audience.
The 10 Ways to Supercharge Your Social Media with Brand Archetypes
- Clear brand messaging
- Consistent brand messaging
- Congruent brand messaging
- Speak effectively to your target audience
- Get noticed and be remembered more easily
- Connect on an emotional level
- Attach to familiar narratives
- Gives you design guidance for your content
- Helps you write copy and captions
- Save time and money
1. Clear brand messaging
You never want your audience to not understand what your brand is all about. How can you stop from being one of those confused brands? Your brand needs to have a CLEAR brand message!
Luckily, archetypes can help you deliver a clear brand message easily!
First, WHY do you need a clear brand message? Telling the same story across the board gets not only your team moving in the right direction, but also your audience. The same clear brand message creates consistent touch points for your audience.
Think of your brand message as your brand’s story…you don’t want it to ever change!
Using archetypes can help you clarify your story, making it easier to tell.
Let’s look at Nike. With their “Just Do It” slogan, their brand aligns perfectly with the Hero archetype. No one has any questions or doubt about what Nike is all about thanks to them clearly using the hero archetype in their branding.
Even in their Facebook’s about section, the first thing the audience sees is their slogan, “Just Do It”.
2. Consistent brand messaging
A consistent brand message is just as important as a clear brand message! What is the point in having a clear message if you won’t be consistent with it? Archetypes make it easier to deliver a consistent message that not only will attract your target audience, but keep them returning.
With a consistent message, your brand can deliver intentional and powerful communication to keep your brand in the back of your audience’s mind. This can be done by not only being consistent with your message, but even in the smallest details. Like the colors and logos you use on your website and social media channels.
Which brand has nailed the idea of using consistent brand messaging with archetypes? Disney.
Disney falls under the Magician archetype. Disney uses the same font and icons across all marketing channels. Look at their Instagram. Even the logos used for their stories are Disney-like. Everytime you see Sleeping Beauty’s castle, not only is the castle recognizable, it also makes you think of Disney!
3. Congruent brand messaging
Just like being clear and consistent with your message, you also need to be congruent!
Communicating a consistent message across ALL of your brand’s channels will also create that connection with your audience that you are looking for.
When it comes to your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and any other form of social media outlet, your brand needs to use the same archetype. How? By being clear and consistent with your content, colors, font, and logos.
Take a look at Apple for example, which uses the Creator archetype. In their commercials and on their social media, they use the same Creator archetype message. Using their products can help you create the unimaginable. One of their recent Instagram posts really captures this archetype.
4. Speak effectively to your target audience
Archetypes fit your brand for a reason and can help your brand speak to your ideal audience. And isn’t that the goal of your social media presence?
If you aren’t sure who your target audience is just yet, archetypes can also help you define your target audience. Remember, you’re likely to convert customers when targeting a specific audience.
How does this work? Archetypes build the emotion that your audience is looking for. So, when a customer is reminded of your brand through the use of an archetype, it entices them to return back to your brand! With an authentic brand purpose, it is possible to create a deeper level of connection with customers.
Harley Davidson does a great job at speaking effectively to their target audience, using the Outlaw archetype. It is pretty clear that Harley’s target audience are those that seek adventure. So, by posting videos and images of people riding their bikes in adventurous places, they can easily speak to their target audience, without even using words!
5. Get noticed and be remembered easily
Of course, you want your brand to get recognized easily! And to take it to the next level, maybe you even want people to think of your services or products right away when they experience certain feelings.
Thanks to archetypes, customers can easily relate to your brand. This is because people remember brands they relate to, which is going to give your brand an edge over the competition. (Which is always a win!)
Like Target for example. Every time you see a bullseye or the color red, don’t you think of Target? But it isn’t just because they use red and the bullseye consistently. Target uses the Everyman archetype, meaning they relate to those who are hard working, but live the simple life. Target effectively uses this archetype to draw in everyday people. Making it easy to remember Target when you need those everyday products.
6. Connect on an emotional level
You want your brand to be memorable, right? The secret of this is to connect to your audience on an emotional and cognitive level.
But how can your brand do this? By storytelling with archetypes of course! Archetypes provide the essential elements needed to give humans the experience they desire.
How do some brands connect on an emotional level? Campbells Soup uses the caregiver archetype to touch people with inspiring stories. All around the board, from their commercials to their social media, Campbells features acts of kindness by humans to create a heartwarming connection.
7. Attach to familiar narratives
When writing your content, you want to try to connect to familiar narratives. This isn’t always a walk in the park.
But using storytelling archetypes is going to ensure that you are tapping into well known and familiar narratives when writing your content.
This familiarity increases the likelihood that your message will connect with your target audience and have some sticking power in their mind. What’s more, your audience will have an easier time describing your brand and what you stand for to others. (Hello referrals!)
Consumers relate to brands that use nostalgia in their marketing. This is another way your brand can apply storytelling to connect with your audience.
Liberty Mutual is a prime example. As the Jester archetype, Liberty Mutual uses humor AND nostalgia to make a lasting impression. We have all seen the hilarious commercials featuring LiMu Emu and Doug.
More recently, Liberty Mutual featured a commercial taking us back to a previous Christmas morning and the excitement the season would bring opening presents as a child. The brand also adds in a little humor towards the end. This commercial creates that warm fuzzy feeling while also making us laugh, making it familiar and impressionable.
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8. Gives you design guidance for your content
Following an archetype also helps your brand produce content that is useful, readable, and inclusive. Making your social media content easy to plan and manage – score!
Using archetypes gives you more than just voice and messaging guidance, they also provide some helpful design guidance when crafting your creative assets. You’ll find that each archetype has closely associated imagery, symbolism, and even colors you can use to help guide the design process. This can include the colors you use in your content to the language used. If you dig even deeper, you’ll even find that your chosen archetype could influence how you take photos for your brand, including your headshots!
Coca-Cola represents the Innocent archetype and uses this throughout their content. They welcome everyone and use kindness in their content to reach their target audience. Look at their Instagram, they use friendly emojis for their story captions.
9. Helps you write copy and captions
Creative storytelling starts with the use of archetypes and helps capture the attention of your audience with a compelling social media caption. Sitting down and writing compelling captions for your Facebook and Instagram isn’t always as easy as it sounds.
Having a framework like an archetype to return to, can easily help you create captions and copy for your brand that will properly convey your brand message…clearly and consistently, of course.
Look at M&Ms candy as an example. The brand continually uses the jester archetype by turning their candy into cartoon characters. This makes planning for content easy, since they can always rely on just featuring their famous brand characters.
10. Save time and money
Saving time and money is always a goal for your brand. With archetypes, you will be spending less time thinking about exactly what to say and focus more on action items and customer experience.
Your hard work will be more effective with a clear brand conveyed to your audience, creating more business and in return, more money, which makes it ALL worth it!
Conclusion
By applying archetypes, you deliver a clear, consistent, and congruent message that will attract that ideal audience you have always wanted.
Archetypes help get brands noticed and connect on an emotional level with familiar narratives. And, your brand can save time and money with archetypes providing design guidance for copy and captions.
Not quite sure where to start? With the help of Ivio Agency’s brand workshops, your brand can find that perfect archetype to help create a powerful social media presence.
About the Author
Calli Varner is an expert content writer for Ivio Agency. She has taken her passion for writing and mixed it with her knowledge of SEO and branding to create unique and informative content.
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