Business Ideas

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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Creating a brand identity is one of the most important aspects of building a successful clothing line. Your brand identity is how your customers are able to identify your business, and is achieved by any images, lingo, philosophy or other details about your clothing line. It’s what makes your business unique, and in a world of billions of other t-shirt businesses, it’s crucial that you have a great brand.

Building Your Brand

It starts with your overall philosophy. What is your brand all about? What does your brand represent? Then think about your brand as its own entity, separate from yourself and your business partners. How does your brand talk? How does it act? Who would it hang out with on a Saturday night? Most likely your brand will be alot like yourself, and that’s the way it should be. It would be pretty hard to try and create a brand you don’t truly believe in. If you’re a computer nerd you definitely shouldn’t try to create a punk rock brand. Well, unless you enjoy jamming to punk rock too, and in that case, a punk rock-tech geek brand would be quite interesting.

Tips

-Own your brand, don’t let customers own it. Pay attention to what your customers want but don’t let them get in the way of what YOU want your brand to be. Maintain control of what you want your brand to mean.

-Just as mentioned before, your brand should be something you truely believe in. If you don’t believe in your brand, how do you expect anyone else to?

-Make sure your brand is clearly communicated. Every thing about your brand should communicate your philosophy.

-It’s important that your business partners also understand and believe in your brand. Build the brand as a team.

-It is said that it takes up to 12 times of a person seeing, hearing, or reading of your brand for it to really make an impression. Find as many ways as you can to make your brand visible to potential customers.

-Have a strong, well defined logo that symbolizes your brand. Also have an overall complimentary design for everything about your clothing line.

-Keep employees involved by regularly taking the time to discuss your brand and how your business is doing.

Remember that your brand represents the whole customer experience, not just your signage or stationery, and cannot be changed overnight.

-Regularly review your customers’ experiences of your business. This will provide an early indication of any elements of your brand that are underperforming.

-Take immediate action to correct this underperforming element. It might save a lot of money and maybe even help you decide if you need to rebrand your whole business.

-Keep a blog on your website. Updating your blog often with your everyday adventures lets customers know the lifestyle your brand represents.

Keep the brand alive! With these tips you should be on your way to developing a lovable brand that’ll skyrocket your business.

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Lately, I have been persevering to unravel and record more and more of branding and the prominence of Logo as the first step towards effective brand building. At this juncture of time, I am pretty sure of certain ideas about brand and brand building.

1.       The foundation of a brand is the logo.

2.       Website, packaging and promotional materials–all of which should integrate your logo–communicate your brand.

3.       Brand strategy is how, what, where, when and to whom you plan to communicate and deliver your brand messages.

4.       What you communicate visually and verbally are part of your brand strategy. A successful brand interfaces in total the verbal and design elements.

5.       Brand acquires a cutting-edge only when it addresses equally a perceived quality or emotional attachment. In May this year, in India, ThumsUp marketed itself by cashing successfully on GO ANY FAR TO QUENCH YOUR THIRST, with Akshay Kumar jumping building and swinging roofs to catch the cool drinks dispensing van, and finally slouching back in a sofa with a bottle of ThumsUp.

6.       If Logo creates business identity, tag line infuses an emotional entity, which makes the product/service human, and readily acceptable.

7.       Using the same color schemes, adhering to fixed logo placement, look and feel throughout is basic and fundamental in building a brand. But, brand building does not stop here it is much, much more that mere design and color consistency.

8.       One Voice & Promise: A brand should essentially convey one voice incorporated into Content and visual imagery. Every brand should promise something which the customer considers vital and needful. Maruti since its inception, offers cars that are affordable and safe, and it has lived up to its promise which none can disprove.

Website and business Branding

The corporate website is one prominent tool to establish a business’ brand. The website predominantly aims to put in place consistency in visual imagery – color schemes, logo, and look. After riffling through a number of corporate websites, I found nothing about branding that addresses the feeling/emotional entity. Color schemes can be justified as the first level of brand building, but debatable is the need to spelling out what is in store about branding in the times to come. Once color schemes and logo adapt consistency, then what? Where is the focus on the points that I discussed above.

Branding through websites by businesses many-a-time is a piecemeal approach better call it a make-shift arrangement. Branding is a science based on practical observation and putting into practice what has been learnt through experience in the market. It is also equally an art which appeals to human emotions. Surprisingly, the science and art dimensions of branding have totally been missed.

What is branding?

Branding is a set of qualities and characteristics that are associated with a person, product, company, or organization. Successful brands rarely have negative associations; brands with negative associations are rarely successful.

What does branding have to do with you?

In a word: everything. We all have a personal brand (whether or not we are aware of it) that either works for us, or against us.

In this regard, the first step in personal brand construction is to develop brand awareness.

This first step is also crucial because it forces you to see yourself as others do. Being aware of what you are subtly and unconsciously conveying to people is the key to controlling the magnetism of your personal brand. It’s also a changing mechanism for altering any negative perceptions that people may have of you.

What do people say are your most positive qualities? What first impressions do people normally have of you? What frequent comments do people make about you? How are you often described as a worker? What remarks or criticisms do people consistently have about your work?

Present these questions to people who are willing to give you honest answers.

Once you receive the answers to these questions, you will have taken a courageous first step in getting in tune with your brand awareness. Once you’ve completed this first step you will also be able to truthfully identify the benefits you are able to offer others.

William Bridges, author of Creating You & Co. and Jobshift, says employers pay for results and what you can produce for them. And those who are succeeding are the ones who know what they have to offer and what they are capable of doing better than some of their competitors.

Once you’ve developed brand awareness, the second step is to evaluate your brand viability.

Brand viability is the process of identifying a list of qualities and characteristics that will enable you to succeed in your professional endeavors. For example, if you are a salesperson, communication skills would have to be at the top of your list. Other qualities might be persuasiveness and resilience.

If you already possess the qualities that you listed, great. If not, don’t fret. You will simply have to cultivate them. If the qualities needed are just not within your reach such as being punctual (and you are always late) or dealing with stressful situations (and you have a quick temper), you should look at the other qualities in your list and determine if they are strong enough to compensate for the qualities you may lack, or re-evaluate your career choice.

The qualities that you list are going to be what you use to attract and retain loyalty from customers or favoritism from employers – but they have to be sincere and tangible. Sincerity is an emotion that you can not underscore – or fake for too long. We analyze information based on data, but most decisions are emotionally driven.

Effective branding engenders trust and loyalty. It will help you get a job, save your job, or win jobs that you bid on.

Step number three is to position your brand.

What is positioning? Al Ries and Jack Trout , who are the foremost authorities on Positioning, stated in their book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, “Positioning is not what you do to yourself. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position yourself in the mind of the prospect.”

In other words, how do you want people to perceive you? You’ve already identified the qualities you’d like to be associated with, but now it’s time for you to do something that will cause you to be perceived in that way.

It’s through consistent actions that brands are built.

Consistency (repetition over a long period of time) is what gives people faith in your abilities. It creates expectations.

A track record that shows what you are capable of is far more credible than telling someone what you are capable of. One fuels credibility, the other invites skepticism.

You can not establish a brand without first positioning it. Seek opportunities to position your brand once you’ve defined it.

The forth and final step of constructing a solid brand is to manage your brand.

Effective brand management consists of striking a balance between what your brand can deliver and the promises that it makes to your target market (employers/clients).

Do you know who your target market is? Do you know what they really desire? The key is to cater to them and their desires while fulfilling needs. Once you work hard to establish a brand that will earn you that reputation, your brand will yield profits for you in a multitude of ways.

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