Archetypal Branding: Cult Branding 2.0

CREATED BY aaron shields DESIGNED BY melissa thornton

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A Cult Brand is born when a group of customers rally around a brand’s lifestyle.

Cult Brands enjoy an unusual level of customer loyalty.

Cult Brands achieve this level of loyalty because they do more than just sell products or services...

They help fulfill their customers’ human needs.

These human needs stem from instincts and act with the same motivational force.

Instincts operate at the deepest biological level; they are natural dispositions towards patterns of behavior.

The psychologist Abraham Maslow arranged these human needs in a hierarchy, with higher-level needs less likely to be fulfilled.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs

Transcendence

Self-Actualization

Aesthetic Needs

Cognitive Needs

Esteem Needs

Belongingness and Love Needs

Safety Needs

Biological and Physiological Needs

Cult Brands leverage higher-level needs to develop mutually beneficial relationships with their customers.

Esteem Needs: Freedom

Self-Actualization: Personal Growth

Esteem Needs: Dominance and Mastery

Maslow’s hierarchy helps explain why customers love their favorite brands.

But it isn’t the whole picture...

Psychiatrist Carl Jung’s concept of archetypes explains consumers’ love for their favorite brands at the level of the psyche.

Archetypes are universal mental images. They set the patterns of behavior for our interaction with the world.

The Sage

The Mother

The Warrior

Archetypes are “the forms which the instincts assume.”

- Carl Jung

Two sides of the same coin:

Human Needs Archetypes

Two sides of the same coin:

Human Needs: ArchetypesEsteem Warrior

Nike capitalizes on the archetype of the Warrior using battle imagery in its depiction of athletes.

Customers who buy Nike products associate with the Warrior archetype, fulfilling the esteem needs of dominance and mastery.

The archetypal image must be used consistently and frequently in order to become associated with your brand.

Nike has spent over three decades finding creative ways to represent the Warrior archetype.

Every brand plays into certain archetypal images and biological needs.

This insight is the key to building a strong brand.

Most brands fail because they don’t understand what they represent to their customers.

Infiniti attempted to link their Q45 to Zen-like imagery of serenity and inner peace.

Serenity, a quality of the sage archetype, is unlikely to happen while driving a car.

Before you develop your next campaign, or try a “creative” new strategy, ask yourself...

“Do I understand the archetype my brand taps into and the human needs it fulfills?”

“Does my advertising consistently reflect that archetype in a meaningful way to my customer?”

Need help determining your brand’s archetype and how to use it?

Visit: www.cultbranding.com/model

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Cult Brand, visit: www.cultbranding.com/101

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from the creative minds @ www.cultbranding.com