The archetype reading
Before the name, before the price, a stranger has already placed your brand among characters they have always known. Twelve questions find which.
Take the reading↓Archetypes appear across stories, cultures, and brands
Each answers one of four needs: to find paradise, to leave a mark, to give structure, to pursue connection
Where the idea comes from
Plato called them forms, Jung called them archetypes, branding gave them twelve names
Carl Jung first wrote the word in 1919, in a paper on instinct. He traced it back through Philo of Alexandria, the Church Fathers and the Corpus Hermeticum to Plato’s eidos, the pattern a thing is copied from. In 2001 Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson, after a decade of brand research at Young & Rubicam, sorted the characters that kept appearing into twelve, in four groups of need. In 2023 a team at Imperial College London read the communications of more than 2,400 brands and found that strong ones rarely carry one character: most carry two or three
Sources at the end of the page
Find paradise
Keeps it simple, and keeps its word
The morning before anything has gone wrong. Jung's paradise, the goal of our longing for redemption
Dove, Innocent Drinks
01 / 12
Find paradise
Goes where the map stops
The departure. Life as a flux, a flowing into the future, not a stoppage
Patagonia, The North Face
02 / 12
Find paradise
Understands first, then says it plainly
The wise old man, the archetype of meaning. To ask the right question is already half the solution
The Economist, Google
03 / 12
Leave a mark
Proves it by doing it
The sun in its course: the trial, the descent and the return
Nike, FedEx
04 / 12
Leave a mark
Breaks what deserves breaking
The counter-tendency Jung found in the trickster: the shadow kept alive, the old river-bed where water still flows
Harley-Davidson, Diesel
05 / 12
Leave a mark
Makes it happen in front of you
Rebirth as renewal: a new form within the span of a single life
Disney, Dyson
06 / 12
Give structure
Looks after you before you ask
The mother archetype: all that cherishes and sustains, that fosters growth
Volvo, Pampers
07 / 12
Give structure
Makes something that lasts, and signs it
The maker's hand. The archetype takes its colour from the one who carries it
LEGO, Moleskine
08 / 12
Give structure
Sets the standard and holds it
The circle that protects: the mandala, order against chaos
Mercedes-Benz, Rolex
09 / 12
Pursue connection
Belongs, and makes room
Common to all. Jung's phrase for the archetypes themselves
IKEA, Levi's
10 / 12
Pursue connection
Is close, and chosen
The anima: the figure that draws us toward relation
Chanel, Godiva
11 / 12
Pursue connection
Lives with delight
The trickster as delight-maker: play that turns the meaningless into the meaningful
M&M's, Duolingo
12 / 12
What you will know in two minutes
The character a stranger meets first. It decides whether they look closer.
The second character, where loyalty lives. Strong brands carry two or three; fewer than two in a hundred hold to one.
Jung’s shadow, the face a brand covers. Named as your counterweight: what to borrow when the story needs depth.
01 / 12
Jung: the mirror does not flatter, it shows whatever looks into it.
Someone meets your brand for the first time. What do they notice
Sources
The reading finds the characters a brand opens with, keeps people with and is missing. It is a starting point for the work, not a diagnosis of the brand or of anyone in it