Selling Tomorrows

Architecting Archetypes? A New Must-Have Book for Corporate Storytellers

If you remember how I excited I was when I found a book that profiled 16 archetypes, you can imagine my reaction when I saw one that does it for 60!  Even better, this beautiful beast, Archetypes in Branding: A Toolkit for Creatives and Strategists, is written not for screenwriters, but for marketers.  It has 60 baseball card-style cards — one for each archetype — that let you literally sift through to find the right match for the company or executive you're branding.

This is how I looked to the guy at the cash register.

In addition to all of these profiles, authors Margaret Hartwell and Joshua Chen load up the introduction with the best collection of definitions of archetypes I've seen. (My favorite is from Jon Howard-Spink: "A universally familiar character or situation that transcends time, place, culture, gender and age. It represents an eternal truth.")  There are also sections on the differences between stereotypes and archetypes, the application of archetypes in an ethical manner and how they can be applied to a brand to express its disparate components as one narrative. 

All of these elements make this "kit" a must-have for corporate storytellers.  My one question for the Hartwell and Chen: when can we get the archetype cards in app format?  It would be great to have the "cards" as something that could be flipped through on a mobile, with living comments below where people could discuss them Reddit-style. 

The Onion's Lampoon of TED Talk Captures Today's Archetypical "Innovator"

Watch this send up of TED Talks courtesy of The Onion. It not only captures the archetype of today's innovator, but also what it looks like the moment an innovative idea breaks into the mainstream:

• Presenter wearing t-shirt, blazer and jeans, symboling a rejection of traditional power embodied in business suits or uniforms
• A Steve Jobs-style presentation on a darkened stage; the single mind who brought the idea into existence; the light that's about to emanate from the darkness
• Rebelliously simple PowerPoints; another rejection of what's considered normal; the use of images not only hits emotional buttons more than text, but communicates "the value of my idea is self-evident; it does not need to be explained with words"
• That look when the speaker clicks "forward" on the wireless mouse and a wave of amazement hits the crowd. "Are you not stunned?"

Contrast this with the older archetypes of invention: There's Edison, the "Wizard of Menlo Park" who had reporters come to him to reveal the latest creations of his invention "factory."  Or, the well-worn Manhattan Project approach where a group of elite scientists toil in secret until something world-changing and always dangerous is tested in some desert.  Go back further and there's Galileo presenting his telescope to the Venetian Senate.  Each capture the economies and power structures of their times. Each remains a part of our understanding and expectation of what innovation looks like.

My favorite quote from the Onion video: 

"We're looking in the eyes of two horrible birds, and we just need a rock that's big enough, efficient enough and innovaive enough to bludgeon them. That rock is an idea."

 

Hey Corporate Storytellers - A Great Guide to 16 Archetypes

I like Joseph Campbell, but often you just want to yell, "give me a list of the archetypes already and some modern examples!"  If you've ever felt that way, "Heroes & Heroines" is your book.  A grand total of 16 archetypes are explored -- eight for men, eight for women.  Each one is summarized with a simple four-paragraph character study, followed by a listing of qualities, virtues, flaws, styles, and common vocations.  A short, but surprisingly dense section follows, where different permutations of archetypes are put together to explore how they clash, mesh and change.

The book is at its best when it references characters from movies you've seen.  It was written in 2000, so some of the films named are a bit dated, but you'll get the gist even if you've seen none of the many classics cited.