How Archetypes shape winning marketing strategies

Jordan: Hi, my name is Jordan McFadyen, and welcome to the Marketing Mindset podcast. So this podcast is to challenge both you and I to always be reassessing our marketing strategies, and come up with new thoughts and new ideas, and how we can move away from random acts of marketing and actually start helping you to build a long-term marketing strategy.

Jordan: And today’s guest on the podcast is Hayden Maskill. Hayden is a copywriter and a brand strategy consultant. And on his website, he clearly states he helps brands just like yours to make money, which is exactly actually why Hayden and I started working together. Hayden has consulted Done By Nine through various parts of our business, like looking at our tone of voice, our brand values and our mission as well. And every time our team meets with Hayden, we always walk away inspired and having learned something a little bit new. So we’ve invited him onto the podcast to share a little bit around what he does, and especially to uncover archetypes. Hayden, thanks for joining us.

Hayden: Thank you for having me, Jordan.

Jordan: Look, it’s been an interesting learning curve for me to learn around archetypes. And this is something that you’ve brought to the forefront to us when we started working through our tone of voice as an agency at Done By Nine. Can you just help by defining what an archetype is, and also just explain what its relevance is to marketing in the first place?

Hayden: Sure thing. So best to go back a little way in history to give it a bit of context. Archetypes are essentially a personification of a set of behaviours. So they date back as old as time, as old as we’ve been telling stories. We’ve been using archetypes, and commonly it goes back to Greek mythology, but all cultures around the world will have archetypes. And it’s this way of having unique characters with different driving motivations.

Hayden: So Carl Jung was the guy who gave the term archetypes, but they have been around forever, and all the old storytellers know the archetypes. In marketing, the general idea is that there’s 12 individual archetypes, and these are 12 different types of character that are pretty relevant to all cultures and all stories. You’ll find a mixture of these archetypes. Most characters will be aligned to an archetype.

Jordan: And in terms of using them for marketing, where do you find? Because obviously when we were doing our tone of voice guides for Done By Nine, this was obviously one of those founding principles to that guide that you first presented to us.

Hayden: Yeah. So what it helps you do is that, it’s one of the things to do with archetypes and stereotypes, it’s all about getting as much information across as quickly as possible. If we reintroduce characters each time with all their details, we would spend forever setting the scene. An archetype is a set of things that we already know and understand. So, for example, one of the archetypes is the hero. And when we think about the hero, we might think of Hercules, or those sorts of characters. And we can start to think about the qualities associated with that archetype.

Hayden: When it comes to brands, picking a character, picking one of these 12 archetypes, really helps you to communicate with your audience quickly. You align yourself with this archetype, and your audience will instinctively understand a lot more about your brand.

Jordan: Obviously, it plays a real role in a brand’s story and a brand’s storytelling at the end of the day. How would you then take an archetype and really think about how you can incorporate that into a marketing campaign, or into the storytelling of a business? What’s that process like?

Hayden: There’s a lot of different ways you can go with that. I find archetypes really useful as a strategic tool, because any strategic tool for me is about making decisions. And so an archetype can help you make decisions about what sort of stories you talk about, how you tell your story, how you respond to different situations. And what you can do is use it as a lens, and you can use it as a lens to look back on history, you can look at current events, and you can also use that lens for looking forward.

Hayden: So one of my favourite archetypes is the sage. And so we can imagine the sage is sort of the know-it-all, the wise, thoughtful character. They value understanding. And so what they do is, when you have a sage archetype, you can start to think, well, when we share our stories, we want to share stories about gaining knowledge, about being thoughtful. And so it can start to give shape to your campaign that can otherwise lose a bit of direction.

Hayden: You could choose a different archetype. You might have something like the caregiver, and we might think of things like hospitals or Plunket. The caregiver, they value serving others. It can give your story shape when you’re talking about being a caregiver. Whatever we think about the values that that person would have, the characteristics. And that can help us with framing the story, from the full-scale campaign right down to individual social media posts.

Jordan: Really, it is like a core component to an overall marketing strategy. And as you’ve just described, it really does pave that way for the content, and the way that you and your brand should be trying to convey the different messaging and the different pieces of content that you’re sharing. Is that kind of what you’re saying there?

Hayden: Yeah, totally. And it helps you… I’m a big fan of things that make life easier. And marketers tend to have very full plates spinning, and far too many plates often. And so archetypes can make things easier, where you know that based on your archetype, there’ll be things that fit with what you do, and there’s things that just don’t fit. And it helps you to just quickly get rid of that.

Hayden: If your brand aligns with the jester archetype, which is the sort of joker, thinking about Oatly oat milk would be a good example. They’re fun, taking the mickey out of people, taking the mickey out of themselves. It helps you look at something that is produced as part of your marketing and go, yep, that feels like us. And that’s a really important judgement to be able to make quickly. Does that feel like us? Yeah, it does.

Jordan: And I guess that’s one of the big issues that we find with clients that we work with as well, around that alignment between a marketing team, and also how the marketing team then aligns with the brand. So I guess having this guidance as well is a great way to get that team aligned, and make sure that they’re all on the same page about where you’re supposed to be heading.

Hayden: Yeah, yep. And I find it quite helpful to think that, as creative as we are, there’s not really that much new under the sun. In terms of these archetypes, they’ve been around for a long time. And so rather than trying to reinvent different types of characters, why not pick one or two that are interesting, and then use those archetypes to help you tell creative stories? Because it’s the stories that are the interesting part. The characters pretty much already exist.

Hayden: And to limit your variables really helps you move forward. If you’re worried about every variable all the time in any situation, it can be overwhelming. By picking an archetype, your marketing team and your business as a whole, when you’re operating and thinking strategically, you’ve cut down a lot of potential dead-end avenues. You’ve made your jobs a lot easier and your work a lot more streamlined.

Jordan: You obviously refer a lot to storytelling. Firstly, how would be the best way for a business to actually work out what their archetype is? Obviously, there’s ways of being able to get someone like yourself involved to work through that process. Or are there any other ways that businesses can start to identify and relate to an archetype themselves, and how they can actually do that?

Hayden: Yeah, it depends on the size of your business, how you might want to approach it. Bigger businesses, or those who have marketing teams separately, it might be something that the marketing team leads with the senior leadership team. And you go through a process of looking at the 12 different archetypes, and some brands that are commonly associated with those archetypes. Or you could look at it on a framework and start to think, these are our values: which values most closely align with which archetype?

Hayden: There are a few different ways into it, but there’s also a lot of information out there. And so I think that there’s no reason you can’t actually look at what are the 12 archetypes from branding, and just start thinking about it. Get some ideas going, because a lot of processes that we go through in marketing can take a long time. But the archetypes, they just tend to feel right. And it’s, as much as it sounds like a cliche, it’s a vibe thing. And when your team looks at the different archetypes, there’ll be a vibe of one or two of them that really do stick out. And that’s generally a sign that that’s the ones that most closely align with you. So even just starting with a quick Google search is the best place to start, and then starting to think really seriously about it. Do a presentation, get everyone to see what they’ve come up with, and you’ll probably find a good deal of alignment in that.

Jordan: So I guess there is a little bit of discussion there as well, within the team, if there were a couple that the team thought they aligned. But obviously, like you say, it’s just choosing that one that feels the natural fit between the different team members, about how the brand actually is supposed to be represented, yeah?

Hayden: Yeah, correct. And you can pick more than one. You can have the sage hero. So it’s a hero who’s got a lot of the characteristics of a hero, but they’re wise and thoughtful. You can have the jester caregiver, who is someone that’s fun-loving and silly, but takes what they do very seriously, which is looking out for other people. And it’s really about your values, and what you value, and what motivates you underneath it. That’s what can help you align with those archetypes.

Jordan: You’ve mentioned a few times around storytelling, and obviously that’s a big part of what you do now, is working with brands on telling stories. How do you incorporate the archetypes into the storytelling feature?

Hayden: There are a few different ways to start with this, as with most things. But my most famously long-winded, but actually really fun, way to do it is to actually write your brand story, and approach it with, as I said before, that lens. So treat your character as this archetype, treat your brand as this archetype. For you guys, pick your archetype, and then you can say, well, many years ago it started when… and you just start writing a story, very much in a classical story that comes up. You can think about obstacles you’ve overcome, you can think about the other characters that play a role in your story.

Hayden: It seems kind of odd to be writing it like a classic hero’s journey sort of story, is a common one. But it can help you make a start, and you can start to see how that character influences, or how your archetype influences, the decisions you’ve made so far. That’s the big stuff: writing your brand story is quite hard. So it often does need a bit of external help.

Hayden: At the smaller end of the scale, I like to think about a few different exercises. And one of those things you can look at is: pick your next three topics you want to talk about, whether it’s product launches or successes or current news items, whatever it is. And think about, how would my archetype approach this, or how would my archetype see this or handle this? And you start to use that lens really carefully. So it’s about picking an angle. If you were aligned with that sage archetype and you value knowledge, it can help you to frame your content.

Hayden: Say there’s a news item in your industry, you can start to think, well, the sage would probably want to have a story that shows some hidden details, or a bit more information than you would otherwise go for. If I was the jester archetype, I enjoy making people laugh and having entertainment, so I want to find an entertaining angle. If I’m the hero, I want to show that I’m doing my best to overcome obstacles that are facing me at the moment. It depends what your archetype is, but just picking something that you want to talk about, and thinking about how would that archetype actually approach that situation, it can really change how you even approach just building any type of content, when you think about it through that lens.

Jordan: And I talk about this a lot as well, is just the importance of, obviously from our side, is having that marketing strategy where you’re always aligned on those goals and those KPIs and those tactics and those channels and platforms. But I guess putting this different layer on top, of actually making sure that the content is just as well defined and continuing on that story, is just so important at the same time, as part of that overall brand voice really, isn’t it?

Hayden: Yeah, and it’s about congruity. When you have a touchpoint of your brand, or everything to do with your brand should feel like part of your brand. And by having an archetype, and by having a sort of lane that you tend to operate within, it can really help with that, and it helps you keep alignment.

Hayden: And I see this quite commonly when businesses haven’t picked the archetype, or they haven’t really got their strategy sorted: their website has one type of character because it’s written by one person, their social channels are often a bit less formal, and then when you talk to someone on the phone, when you call out that business, it’s a different experience again. That, to me, as a customer and as someone interested in marketing, that’s a sign that there’s not a lot of strategic alignment, because every time I interact with one business, I should have a fairly consistent experience.

Hayden: It doesn’t matter what channel or medium that’s through. You want to have a very consistent experience as a customer. And also you want to know as a business that your customers are going to have a consistent experience, because you’re controlling the variables of what you can assess, and how you can improve your situation or your interactions with customers. So consistency and congruity is really important.

Hayden: And having an archetype as part of your strategy can help you think, well, how are our people talking to our customers? If we’ve aligned with the caregiver, how caring and considerate and gentle are our staff when they talk? Do we need scripts to help them? Is it training? What is our web copy like? What is our Twitter account like? Are they all aligned? That’s really important.

Jordan: The consideration you’ve just brought there, that made me think around some of those other roles within an organisation or a business that may not have anything to do with even the sales and the marketing side. Maybe that front facing, even once a client or a customer gets to that customer service stage, so important to make sure that that team is also aligned. Have you had much experience, and can share any insight into how you would incorporate or introduce people that may not be in sales and marketing to something like a brand guide or an archetype?

Hayden: I think the best advice would be to make sure that you have any of your brand persona or character or about us, have it on one page. Condense it down to one page. This is another reason an archetype is really helpful. Have all of your stuff about who you are condensed onto a single page, and really lean into it. If you want to pick an archetype, say that you are the hero archetype and that’s your character, really lean into that and show, we are heroes, this is how we show that we are heroes. And you start to just make sure that it’s everything you do. All of your most boring operational manuals, approach them with that idea in mind, and that will start to imbue all of your conversations and all of your content and everything.

Hayden: One of the common downfalls I do see is that brands will invest in their brand tone of voice, for example, or a strategic plan, and it only operates ever at a surface level. It’s left there to be, well, this is just our customer-facing thing, and it might inform what we post on Facebook, but that’s not really the power of a strategy. If you can bring it in at every level of your brand and your business, it will have a lot more impact, because you’ve got everyone who works there aligned with that strategy. It doesn’t mean that you need to go into every meeting dressed like Hercules, but if all of your staff know that your brand considers itself a bit of a hero, and it likes to put the service of others and victory over obstacles at the forefront, that is a really good way to make sure that everyone is singing from the same song sheet.

Jordan: I was thinking as well, as you were discussing just then, around how an archetype could evolve. But also, is an archetype something that a business could shift, or you recommend having one archetype and that’s your business? Because I know that strategies and audiences can sometimes change. Would that be a common place to, like, there may be someone here thinking, this is the brand that we have built, but we see our client changing slightly. Is that something, a process that could happen?

Hayden: Definitely, and it’s quite common, particularly as businesses grow. Certain archetypes, depending on your industry, will be a little bit easier to manage as you grow. So, for example, you might be the jester when you’re fairly small and you’re a young, disruptive brand. But once you start reaching into other markets, and start perhaps cross markets into other cultures, other countries, you have to be a little bit careful: being a jester in English in New Zealand, it’s very different to being a jester even in Australia. Very different, the further you go with that.

Hayden: So you might transition. You might start being more of the everyman brand, which is, it’s for the people. And it’s a little bit more universal, and a little bit less risky to go down that route. So you might transition your tone of voice a little bit, and your brand character, to be a slightly different persona. It could be helpful if you pick two. You might have a main archetype that you believe in, and then you might have a second one that informs your brand slightly. You might start transitioning to that second one more over time. It is quite common.

Hayden: And being a disruptor is one of those really good examples of, you can only be a disruptor until a certain point, and then you’re the one that’s going to be disrupted. So it is worth thinking about over time. If you’re in that transitional space, if you’ve grown a lot and now you’re looking for a new direction, it might be worth looking at that again and going, okay, well, actually, we need to think, that’s who we are and who we have been. Who do we want to be? You can frame it that way, if that’s a helpful way to look at it.

Jordan: We speak a lot around marketing strategy in terms of return on investment and KPIs and reach and engagement and those type of things. But having this extra layer on top of the strategy, to really align all those key bits of storytelling and the key bits of who your brand actually is, it is so important. And I think you’ve highlighted so many different aspects here of why it’s important, not just in the forefront of your marketing or your sales team, but also when you go beyond that as well, to the rest of the business.

Jordan: It doesn’t have to be a difficult process, it can actually become something. And this is from our experience as well, since you’ve introduced us to our business as well, is it actually becomes a tool that you can use for clarity. And it’s the examples you’ve shared here today, that when you’re releasing content, or thinking about creating content, or changing messaging on your website, you can always refer back to that and use that as that point of truth. And I guess it even helps unblock some of your creative block that you’ve got, because you’ve got that starting point about what you’re trying to share, yeah?

Hayden: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the other thing that’s helpful, and this is an intangible thing, and it might just be me thinking it, but when you see these archetypes and you look into them, there’ll be something out there for you. And it also removes barriers.

Hayden: One of the things, and this is, I think, a uniquely New Zealand thing, is we don’t really like to claim to be an authority on things, or if we do, we tend to hedge our language. So, we’re at the top of our game. We don’t tend to say we’re the best, or, we tend to pull it back a little bit. But when you look at archetypes, you can start to think, well, actually, no, this just gives me a little bit more support that actually brands like mine do exist. And I can start to look at what are some of those brands, and I can think, well, I’m quite like them. And we can start to borrow a little bit of how they talk.

Hayden: And for example, one of the archetypes is the ruler, which is, we’re always in charge, we’re the boss. And that, to a New Zealand brand, can feel quite uncomfortable, because it sounds a tall poppy and all of that. But one of the classic examples of the ruler might be Mercedes-Benz. And if you look at all of their marketing, they’re in charge. They are a premium car, and they know it, and they’re very exclusive, and they know it. And you can look at their marketing, and you can use that to, as you say, unblock your creativity, because you can find a brand that does align with your archetype, maybe even be a different industry. But you can see something else that does have a similar archetype, and that’s a really good way of just breaking out of any kind of creative block.

Jordan: It’s given me a lot of insight, even though I’ve been through this process with you, and we’ve identified our archetype here at Done By Nine, which was sage. And it was a great process to go through, and it gives us a lot of alignment. But even just hearing some further thoughts about how it works with other brands, and how other brands and businesses and organisations can find their own, or use a consultant like yourself to be able to assist in that. I think it is, from my point of view, so important to make sure that everything is aligned, and it just makes it so much clearer, like you say, for the team, and for your customers and clients, so they truly understand about who you are and who you serve and everything like that as well.

Jordan: So I find that really insightful, and thank you for your time, for jumping on and explaining how this process works. If anyone did have questions, or they wanted to work with you in exploring their own archetype, what would be the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Hayden: I think email is the best way, because you can say everything you need to say, and I’ll get back to you. And then, I think, start with an email, we’ll move to a phone call, and get the ball rolling.

Jordan: Awesome. And all your details online, it’s haydenmaskill.com, is that right?

Hayden: Yep, that’s correct, haydenmaskill.com. And you can find me on LinkedIn as well. Just search for Hayden Maskill Copywriter, and I should come up. Send me a message through there if you’d like as well.

Jordan: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Hayden. It’s been an absolute pleasure to chat with you, and we are going to bring you back on, because I want to discuss another piece that we’ve been working on together, which is around a brand’s vision and mission and values, and how to create those. Because, again, I think this archetypes is the first stage, and then I think developing and moving through the different parts of your marketing is really important.

Jordan: And again, this is a piece of work that we’re currently working on and adjusting and reworking within our business. So I think sharing this process around what we are doing together will be hopefully helpful to listeners, and to others who are potentially in that stage of building out their marketing strategy, and trying to think about who they are and who their brand identifies with as well. So I thank you so much for your time.

Jordan: And look, if you’ve got any questions about archetypes, or you want to learn anything else around digital marketing or anything like that, you can find us on our website. All our blogs and articles and podcasts can be found at donebynine.com. And look, if you wanted to chat with myself or the rest of the team, and connect with Hayden as well, you can find us online, donebynine.com. You can go to the Contact Us page, and we’ll be more than happy to work with you through your marketing strategy. And again, Hayden, thank you so much for your time.

Hayden: Thank you heaps, Jordan. It was a pleasure, and I can’t wait for the next one.

Jordan: Awesome. Sounds good. And we will see you on the next episode of the Marketing Mindset podcast. Have a good day.