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BRAND Margaret Thatcher: Steely, decisive, unchanging&

Special correspondent

Who do you think of when you hear the words: “A feisty, confident and fiercely independent career woman”?

Madonna? Yes, those four words apply. But what about Margaret Thatcher?

The fact is, both are blonde, ruthlessly ambitious and had their heyday in the Eighties.

However, Madonna has undertones of “controversial, shocking, sexually empowered, spiritual” while Thatcher could also be said to be “steely, decisive, unchanging, unyielding”.

The differences between these two characters provide a perfect illustration of why brand personalities are so important. More crucial still is the manner in which these personalities are expressed, and to whom. Enter archetypes, and a whole new way of thinking about brand positioning and mobilisation.

BRAND Madonna: Controversial, shocking, sexually empowered&

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Archetypes, for those of you who didn’t take Psychology I, are a Jungian concept that explains why we have strong perceptions around certain icons. Mention “mother”, for example, and your brain is likely to be flooded with a set of very definite ideas.

What does that have to do with you? Simple: marketers tap into archetypes to give their brands personalities that appeal to their target markets.

The expression and strength of a brand’s archetype has a great deal of influence on consumers’ relationship with the brand and its success. Brands built on distinctive character have been shown to grow 66 percent faster than their competitors.

When it comes to the understanding and creation of brand character, most organisations think the way to define character in their positioning strategy is to agree on three to four descriptive words – friendly, cuddly, cute, for example.

But a good brand character can’t be captured (or measured) in a handful of words alone – as Madonna and Thatcher prove.

This may sound obvious, but its importance cannot be underestimated. The stronger the brand archetype, the more readily you – the consumer – will recognise and connect with the brand itself.

This is where distinguishing between primary and secondary archetypes gives what marketers call “richness and granularity” to the brand.

If you have 12 key archetypes, for example, and each has 11 possibilities for a different secondary archetype, that’s a lot of depth you’re adding. For example, where primary archetype models might offer the “hero” as a potential positioning character, the secondary archetype layer adds depth, seeing a distinct difference between a Hero Regular Guy (eg Levi’s), a Hero Outlaw (eg Virgin), or a Hero Creator (eg Apple).

Global brand development and marketing insight consultancy Added Value used archetypes in a recent study to determine how the four main cellular network brands in South Africa – Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and Virgin Mobile – are currently viewed among the online population.

A total of 438 respondents were included in the study, using Added Value’s proprietary online tool, CharacterLab (www.characterlab. com). Analysis of the results showed that despite how much marketing activity there is in the category, none of the four brands deliver a strong, distinctive personality archetype.

Three archetypes tend to dominate the industry – Creator, Jester and Explorer – with all brands scoring highly across all three.

Vodacom has a greater tendency to the Hero and Regular Guy archetype, but its overall archetype profile lacks distinction. Interestingly, MTN has the highest primary association with an archetype – 17 percent of respondents associated the brand with Jester – but again, the Jester archetype too is common to the category as a whole and MTN shows little further distinguishing archetype characteristics.

Virgin Mobile’s strongest archetype is the Explorer, probably driven by the public profile of its famous group CEO, Sir Richard Branson, but again these traits are common to the other brands in the category. Virgin Mobile’s Outlaw profile is slightly higher than that of Cell C and considerably higher than Vodacom and MTN, but its lack of intensity shows that the brand has not owned this archetype in the mind of consumers.

Cell C’s strongest archetypes are Creator and Jester. Younger respondents were more likely to see Cell C as Magician and Outlaw. Older consumers were more likely to see Creator and Regular Guy as traits in all the cellular brands.

“What all of this suggests,” said Keith Stevens, MD of Added Value South Africa, “is that despite being a category with only a small number of big players, no one brand seems to be delivering a clear and differentiating character in the minds of consumers.

“Creator and Explorer traits are fairly endemic to the category itself, which is driven by innovation and technological advancement, so it’s not a surprise to see those surface as industry table-stakes. But ideally you’d want to see the brands owning a more distinct personality.

“This kind of clutter in a category is not unusual. The established brands tend to play to the character of the category they’re in. Which is why chocolate brands tend to deliver Lover as a category staple while financial services tend towards Hero and Sage… these archetype norms sometimes differ from market to market.

“Brands can either hone in strongly on the essential character of a category and own it like Harley tends to own Explorer in the motorcycle category or Apple owns Creator in the broader technology category. Or they can dial up a secondary archetype to deliver distinction. For argument’s sake, what kind of positioning opportunities might there be for a chocolate brand to really play up Outlaw traits? That kind of distinctive characterisation could be category changing.”

Stevens noted that the recent rebranding of Vodacom and Cell C, as well as the shift in the industry from voice services to data could be responsible for some of the clutter in perception, but said this period of change was also an ideal opportunity for brands to consolidate their positioning to meet consumers’ changing needs and drive differentiation by building more consistent brand character.

So, the next time you see a new campaign for one of the big four, you might wonder: “Would Jung approve?”