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Bonita L Richter asked:


Have you ever felt that the people you are marketing to don’t “get you” or understand you?

Or, maybe you know you’re not communicating the “right” message to your target audience, but you’re not sure how to change your message, or what it should be.

The problem in both above instances could be your’re not harnessing and using the power of ancient archetypes in your personal branding strategy.

To help explain the concept of ancient archetypes…

Have you ever noticed certain brands, advertisements, movies, or celebrity personalities seem to instantly connect with you? Without you even realizing it, these brands are communciating a story and meaning to your soul it is already deeply familiar with.

Research in the marketing field indicates that the most powerful brands consistently embody the persona of ancient archetypes. Which ancient archetype you embody is the first thing you must do before you begin developing a personal brand identity.

So, what is an ancient archetype?

Archetypes are believed to be universal, mythical characters that live within the collective unconscious of people all over the world. By symbolizing our core human desires, archetypes can evoke strong, deep emotions that everyone can connect to, and understand.

Examples of powerful brands that stir our emotions are Coke, Nike, Marlboro; movies such as Star Wars, and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial; and personalities like Jackie O., John Wayne, and Lady Di. These “brands” have captured and held the imagination of the public. Why? Because they represent something soulfully and deeply familiar to us.

The twelve ancient archetypes are the:

1. Creator

2. Caregiver

3. Ruler

4. Jester

5. Regular Guy/Gal

6. Lover

7. Hero

8. Outlaw

9. Magician

10. Innocent

11. Explorer

12. Sage

Each of these archetypes possess powerful identities that signal the fulfillment of basic human desires and emotions, and releases deep emotions and yearnings within us. Scientific research signals the missing link in successful marketing and branding is a lack of understanding of archetypes, and the power they possess.

During the recent development of my own personal branding strategy, I focused on researching and studying the twelve ancient archetypes to determine which one resonated with me most. After my study, I determined the ancient archetype that best describes me is the Ruler. Well-known Ruler brands are Saab, Ralph Lauren, Fortune, and Microsoft.

The Ruler archetype is known as the leader, and desires control; it also seeks to create prosperity and success, and to make order out of chaos. The ruler identity is right for a brand if it is:

- A high status product

- A product to help people get more organized

- A product at the moderate to high price range

Knowing this type of information helps to create a personal branding strategy that is consistent with the attributes and values of the brand, as well as identify the words to use to market the brand.

By using the ancient power of archetypes when branding your business, you will immediately make your marketing easier, and you’ll feel more confident because you’re authentically communicating who you are. This message of individuality and expression is so powerful, your ideal client will intuitively understand you, and be attracted to you.

A branding strategy, using archetypes, allows your audience to dive deep into the heart and soul of who you really are.

Whether you are developing your personal branding strategy for the first time, or rebranding, using ancient archetypes will separate the ordinary brands from you—the extraordinary brand. Use the power of ancient archetype to develop a powerful personal branding strategy to tell your brand’s story.

Copyright 2008, Bonita L. Richter



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Scott Lindsay asked:


Some of the best ideas for web branding defy logic. For instance, if you were to develop an ecommerce site you might well seek to establish your business name as the primary branding feature. What if your business name is less important than you think?

Developing a catchy slogan seems to be an important step in branding? What if your site visitor is mostly interest in what you do or what you have to offer?

In some ways the best ideas for web branding turn the tables of conventional thought and leave the entrepreneur standing on his ‘proverbial’ head.

Would it surprise you to learn that the most common elements prospective customers look for is the immediacy of information that allow them to connect with your site as a provider of their need? Frankly, many of these prospects are interested in your company name only after they determine if you can help them.

By placing the ‘what we do or sell’ before the ‘who are we anyway’ online business may discover visitors will spend more time with the site and that may ultimately result in a satisfied customer.

Look at it this way; I am looking for a company that sells grommets in bulk. The search engine I use tells me there are over 2.5 million sites that have to do with grommets. Now, if an online business that is selling grommets has performed proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques I can be fairly certain some of the best grommet stores are going to be displayed first.

However, if all I find on the opening page is a fancy logo, slogan and a paragraph or two about how the grommet store came into being I may well be tempted to hit the ‘back’ button and continue my search somewhere else.

Most online visitors don’t want to spend a lot of time learning to navigate a new site, especially if it turns out to be a site that does not ultimately meet their needs.

By all means, develop an attractive logo that represents your business well, but let the branding take place in the immediacy of information. If you are able to answer your prospects most basic questions quickly this will likely impact them in a greater way than attractive flash design that supplies little relevant substance.

Branding is always about more than the logo and nothing less than a positive impression.

Does this alter your thinking about how to brand your business? What can you do to take a positive step forward?



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Jonathan Andrews asked:


There is an increasing body of evidence that makes the case for solid employer brand management. From an organisation’s point of view, an employer brand encapsulates the key qualities current and prospective employees associate with you as an employer. These qualities can be economic (remuneration), functional (training and skills) or psychological (such as a sense of identity or status).

As an organisation, whether you’ve taken the time to define it or not, you have an employer brand. What are the benefits of building a good employer brand? Three benefits that have been identified in studies that make a case for employer brand management are enhanced attraction, increased retention and greater engagement with staff

In essence, this means attracting better quality candidates at a lower cost, more effective and proactive employees and, ultimately, increased revenues.

How does one reach the heart of employer brand management? The answer to this question is that the key principles for employer brand management are much the same as for regular brand management. Whoever is tasked with developing the employer brand needs to spend quality time and effort defining the key components of the brand. This definition is characteristically encapsulated by a model that defines how you’d like the brand to be received by the target audience (which in the case of an employer brand is prospective and current employees). This model will provide the starting point for your brand strategy.

There is an implicit danger in this approach however as one needs to be cognisant of the fact that just defining the vision of the brand is not the brand itself. This is merely the way you’d like people to perceive the brand. The real brand lives in people’s everyday experiences of the brand and the perceptions and associations they have in their heads about your organisation.

People have a tendency to become cynical of brands which promise a great deal, but under deliver. To bridge the gap between the perception of a brand and the brand reality, many top brand-led companies create two definitions of the brand: one that enshrines the brand as it is currently perceived and experienced, and the other describing how the company would like the brand to be perceived.

There is a delicate balance between these two definitions. On the one hand, organisations should be striving for the latter, but change too much about the former and the brand may lose focus, change too little and the brand may lose relevance.

Within the employer brand context, you need to understand the explicit needs to your employees as a point of departure. But, to ensure and effective internal brand strategy, you also need to develop an understanding of employees implicit needs as well as the broader organisational and cultural context in which it will operate.

The benefits of having a strong employer brand are numerous. Enhanced attraction, increased retention and greater engagement with staff have already been mentioned. This presents a number of opportunities for human resources, as well as enhanced marketing functions. Richard Mosley goes into greater detail about this in an eArticle entitled “Employer Brand – The performance driver no business can ignore”.

Richard Mosley also makes a compelling argument about why employer brand thinking is here to stay. Broadly, there are three reasons for this.

First, organisations are realising more and more that they cannot take the commitment and loyalty of their staff for granted. The old notion that if you give someone a decent job, they will gratefully do your bidding is ill-conceived and somewhat irrelevant in modern organisations. Valuable employees, just like profitable customers, are free to make their own choices and engage as they wish. The way to attract and retain skilled and able employees who perform to the best of their ability is through a coherent benefit-led approach that many companies are not accustomed to providing.

Second, employer branding provides an effective bridge between HR, internal communications and marketing. Recruiting, retaining and developing the right people is becoming all the more important in business as most organisations now recognise their staff as their most important asset.

Third, employer branding draws on a discipline that has proven lasting value in the marketplace. Employer branding draws on established principles of branding and brand management. This is the most effective way to sustain people’s commitment and loyalty.

In today’s world, overlooking your organisation’s brand strategy and how your brand is perceived by employees is short-sighted. One of the most effective ways to ensure commitment and buy-in from your employees is by building a strong employer brand with which they can identify.



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Andri R asked:


SEO website is the best way to optimize an online business. With SEO website, our site will appear on high rank and easily to find out on search engine. A company with its product and service will be known by a lot of people from search engine result. After good marketing like that, a business should build its brand for more optimization.

In business marketing, brand is the first important tool. Some people distinguish the psychological aspect of a brand from the experiential aspect. The psychological aspect, sometimes referred to as the brand image, is a symbolic construct created within the minds of people and consists of all the information and expectations associated with a product or service. With one brand, most of businessman can explore a lot of kind of business around the world with internet. One thing that should be noticed is making a strong brand. Brand can be built with SEO website, and there are 5 ways I’ve compiled to do for creating a strong brand

1.      Create a unique name for your business center. It can be done by choosing your own name or trying to find out some unique name out of there. As we all know, there are so many brand going from the business owner.  A unique brand business firstly attract customer’s eyes catcher to know more about it inside.

2.      Create a unique business mascot and slogan picture, this is one way to make customer memorize our business in their mind stronger than words.

3.      Create a SEO website with page optimization and SEO design.

For example of point 1 to 3, just say, “John Cow”, an online businessman. He made his business brand from his own name and created a cow as his mascot. And unique web design by showing a car with cow paint dotted include.

4. Create your own SEO contest

What will we get for our business from this contest? SEO contest is the best way to get traffic, network, and brand all at once. People who participate a SEO competition will try to win it by building a lot of links and network to appear in top search engine. With good position you will be known by a lot of people around the world and it makes visitor find out about “who is the guy?” It will bring a lot of visitors to your website and in the same time you show your business brand. After that, your website will get more traffic visitor and rank

Anyone can hold a SEO contest. When you have had big business and want to build it stronger, you can hold a SEO contest with your brand as key phrase and your link inside. Why not? Let’s see how big your brand and rank then before.

5. Use social bookmark sites to expand your website such as dig, stumbleupon, delicious, etc. That’s good for your network and publish your brand to the network.



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