Automated Archetype Analysis

What do you do when you want to reliably measure what signals your brand is transmitting, and how this compares to the competition? We’ve developed a novel approach called Automated Archetype Analysis that measures exactly what a brand stands for.

Archetypes are universal symbols that allow us to classify and understand brands and the messages they are sending out. As an example, Carl Jung’s well-known Archetype model, originated in psychology, has been applied to advertising, literature, market research and semiotics. Here’s how some well known brands compare, based on our automated metrics.

The brands above show markedly different archetype profiles, O2 has a stronger “Explorer” profile, while Nationwide has a much stronger “Caregiver” profile. Virgin seems to be mapping more onto “Rebel” and “Creator” characteristics. Do you agree with our automated model?

As an aside, it’s noticeable that the COVID-19 crisis has prompted many brands to temporarily emphasise the ‘Caregiver’ aspects of their brand nature. Caregiver brands seek to help and look after others, bringing security and comfort. The core Caregiver attributes are compassion, generosity, altruism, empathy, and nurture – exactly what people have been needing over the last few months.

Of course, this is only one of many Archetype frameworks we can deploy. We have much more nuanced models – below is a plot using some of our universal building blocks of Archetypes. This data is part of an analysis of attitudes towards Brexit, and shows how strong the discourse about safety and security was amongst certain segments who were more positively disposed towards remaining in the EU.

Signoi’s Archetype Analysis is fast, inexpensive, reliable and insightful. You can use it for a wide range of research such as message testing as well as competitor analysis.

And we can even build your own bespoke Archetypes – particular categories, brands or cultural contexts may require a more focused type of archetype. We can help you set these up and calibrate them against your data for even more insight. For example, you can convert your brand purpose statements or values into an Archetype System and then test out how well your messages align with this. You can see whether the signals coming back from customers are in line with what you would ideally hope for.

You can even see how the competition measures up and how differentiated your brand really is… and you can track this over time, too.

This is exactly what Signoi’s clients are doing across a range of categories, from finance, technology, FMCG, through to telecoms and leisure.

If you want to try Automated Archetype Analysis on text or images, please contact us at andy.dexter@signoi.com