Opinion: Customers already know your brand archetype – do you?

Chris Jarratt

There’s a concept in brand strategy called the brand archetype – a personality framework rooted in Jungian psychology that categorizes companies into roles like the caregiver, the rebel, the hero or the everyman. Most small and mid-size businesses have never heard of it. Fewer have intentionally chosen one. And yet, right now, your customers are assigning you one anyway.

That’s not a theory. It’s playing out in real time at some of America’s most recognizable brands.

Take Frida Baby. The baby care company built its identity around being the irreverent best friend of exhausted new parents, the one who tells you the messy truths nobody else will. For years, that archetype worked. Snot-covered billboards? Breast milk ice cream? Parents laughed because it felt authentic to the brand they thought they knew. But when old marketing materials surfaced in February – product packaging with sexual innuendo tied directly to infant products – the reaction wasn’t laughter. It was boycotts. The humor hadn’t changed. The archetype had been violated. 

Customers didn’t need a brand strategy document to feel the dissonance. They felt it instinctively, because they had already decided who Frida Baby was. The company’s jester energy was welcome when it made parenting feel survivable. It became intolerable when it felt like babies were the punchline.

Target tells a similar story from a different angle. Over years of intentional brand-building, Target had assumed the role of the progressive everyman, an affordable, inclusive store for everyone. Customers internalized that identity. It was part of why they chose Target over a competitor. When the company rolled back its DEI commitments in early 2025, many customers didn’t just feel disappointed. They felt deceived. Not because Target had broken a legal contract, but because they had broken an unspoken one. The brand had made a promise through its actions, and customers held them to it.

This is the part most business owners miss: You don’t have to declare your brand archetype for one to exist. Every interaction, your customer service tone, your social media voice, your pricing strategy and your community involvement is a data point customers are quietly cataloging. They’re building a picture of who you are. And once that picture is set, deviating from it carries a cost.

The good news is that you have more control over your archetype than you think, if you’re intentional. The risk is that if you’re not, your archetype will be assigned to you by default, assembled from whatever signals you’re sending consciously or not.

So, the real question isn’t: What archetype should we choose? It’s: What archetype have we already created, and is it the one we want?

Answering that question before a crisis does is far cheaper than answering it after.

Chris Jarratt is the chief creative officer and co-founder of Revel Advertising. He can be reached at chris@reveladvertising.com.