The Archetypes of AXE and Dove

One tool in Marketing today, is the use of Archetypes in order to find the right personality for a brand. Archetypes are mythic characters that are found within the collective unconscious of people all over the world and are therefore understood universally. Archetypes are used in myths and stories in different cultures and tap into human aspirations and emotions. There are 12 different archetypes and each one has its own significance based on values and character traits: The Innocent, The Everyman, The Explorer, The Sage, The Hero, The Outlaw, The Magician, The Jester, The Caregiver, The Creator, The Ruler, and The Lover.

In the case of AXE, one can clearly recognize ’The Magician’ aka the visionary or healer at the core of the brand. It is characterized by the desire to understand the fundamental laws of the universe and the goal to make dreams come true by developping a vision and following it (strategy). To be classified as a ’Magician’, a brand needs to live by the motto ’I make things happen’, have the unconditional promise to transform its customers, offer a new and contemporary product that is transformative, be consciousness expanding and be associated with spirituality. AXE exemplifies some of these characteristics, first of all the unconditional promise to transform its customers. In its communication strategy, AXE promises the ’average guy’ to get the girls by using the product. Recognizing this, one can say that AXE’s vision is to help guys achieve a supernatural experience by promoting faith and establishing confidence in the consumers mind . The weakness of ’The Magician’ is the danger of becoming manipulative. This also applies to AXE.

In the case of Dove, the campaign for Real Beauty is a very successful brand story with a strong message of transformative thinking which challenges the ideal of beauty and breaks with the rules of the beauty industry. This corresponds to the characteristics of ’The Outlaw’ that disrupts and overturns what isn’t working. However, the desire of this archetype, to revenge and revolt contradict the core value of Dove and therefore, this archetype does not apply to Dove. However, Dove seems to exemplify ’The Innocent’, with the goal of achieving a pure life by doing the right thing. In other words, to be happy. ’Free to be yourself’ could be the motto of this archetype and fits Dove’s mission perfectly. In addition, ’The Innocent’ seeks to provide an identity for brands with clear values that want to be differentiated from brands with bad reputation and offer an easy solution to a well-known problem and are associated with goodness,simplicity and morality. All of these personality traits of ’The Innocent’ seem to be a perfect match to Dove, a brand that has recognized that the image of beauty, as promoted by the beauty industry, was not coherent with reality and has offered a simple solution to women around the world: to accept and love themselves!

- Anke S.

Sources:

http://aestheticcrit.com/brand-design-and-its-archetypes.html

http://joannapenabickley.typepad.com/on/2007/06/on_the_12_arche.html

http://berroa.weebly.com/hbr-dove-real-beauty-campaign.html
http://forty.co/resources/brand-archetypes