Mass Behaving: Unlocking the Power of Branding with Archetypes

By Joseph Szala

THE SECRET TO SHIFTING AUDIENCE BEHAVIORS IS WAITING TO BE UNLOCKED

Every marketing and branding leader, whether strategist, designer, or client, is hungry for the secret to shifting the behaviors of their audience. Searching high and low for some newfangled tactic, they overlook what's existed throughout the history of humanity. But the s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Szalapalooza, LLC
• Release date: Mar 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9780990615576

Book preview

OTHER TITLES BY THE AUTHOR

Fire It Up: Building Restaurant Brands That Blaze (2011 / Out of Print)

Stop Blasting My Mama: Make Email Marketing Work for Your Restaurant (2014 / Out of Print)

The Bullhearted Brand: Building Bullish Restaurant Brands That Charge Ahead of the Herd (2021)

Mass Behaving

Unlock the Power of Branding with Archetypes

A Szalapalooza, LLC Publication

Published by Bullhearted Press

1387 Woodland Hills Drive

Atlanta, Georgia 30324

[phone]

www.bullhearted.co

© 2024 Copyright by Joseph Szala and Szalapalooza, LLC. D/B/A Bullhearted Printed in the United States of America.

First Edition February 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher except where permitted by law.

ISBN 978-0-9906155-6-9

ISBN 978-0-9906155-7-6 (e book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024901041

To my wife, Elisa, my wonderful kids, Evelyn and Gabriel,

and little Elsa, best pupper in the world!

Contents

Introduction

What are archetypes?

Overview of the Archetypes & Quadrants

The 12 Core Archetypes

Quadrant: Change the World

Quadrant: Foster Belonging

Quadrant: Exert Control

Quadrant: Find Fulfillment

Finding a Brand’s Archetype: The Archetype Workshop

Activating the Archetype

Closing

About the Author

Further Reading

Bibliography

Index

Chapter 01

Introduction

By now many brand leaders, marketers, and strategists understand the power of creating Purpose-driven brand strategies. Whether you first encountered the idea in Simon Sinek’s ultra popular TED Talk and accompanying book, Start With Why, or via one of the many brand strategists and thinkers with a loudspeaker (ahem… sorry), Purpose-first strategies are the key to rapidly acquiring early adopters, turning new fans into advocates, and reclaiming the heydays of a legacy brand.¹

If you’re still unconvinced, there are any number of books that will explain the reasons why this pathway works, how it has worked for other brands, and methodologies for excavating and reinforcing a brand’s Purpose. I’m rather partial to my own contribution, The Bullhearted Brand, but I’m happy to offer up a few other books that I have found to be remarkably convincing, insightful, and inspiring. I’ve listed them on the Bullhearted.co website and in the appendix of this book.

Even after delving into the nuances and details surrounding and supporting a Purpose-led brand strategy, many are left with more questions. How do you identify it? What makes a brand Purpose successful or unsuccessful? How do you know that whatever Purpose you’ve identified is truly right? And the ultimate question: will it work?

It seems that in all of the knowledge trust available through pundit writings, videos, and speaking engagements, the pathway to finding a brand’s Purpose is still fraught with fogginess, uncertainty, and a lack of clarity. Finding a brand’s Purpose feels a lot like grasping in pitch-black darkness for a key, with very little direction on where to find it.

Branding, at its very core, has a singular Purpose all its own. Deeper than sales and retention. Deeper than uplifting stock values and shareholder perceptions. When you boil everything down and distill the whole reason for branding and marketing, you end up with a simple truth. Everything a company and its people do aims to change and reinforce behaviors.

Companies want more sales. More loyalty. Higher stock values. More investment. Larger footprints. And the fuel behind every one of these goals lies in changing behaviors within consumers, guests, investors, board members, and so on.

That leaves us with the question of: what motivates behavioral change?

A company’s Purpose strives to shift behaviors and align with the values of the people it attempts to attract. But the Purpose has to have a reason behind it. Otherwise, we’d all be running companies that seek to change the world—which is a pretty generic and vague sentiment. After all, everything that every single human does literally changes the world. Maybe not in cataclysmic, macro ways, but even the flapping of butterfly wings is said to create hurricanes elsewhere on the planet.

Most Purposes will connect with a few people; otherwise, they would never be approved. But we’re looking for mass connectivity. The only way to do that is to identify whom we seek to connect with and foster a deep-rooted understanding of what’s missing in their world. Thus, we’ve stumbled upon the true meaning of want, which is the core motivator for all human behaviors.

Through understanding what a core group of people lack, we can alter what we do (Product), how we do it (Personality), and why we do it (Purpose) to build believability in our brand. A well-defined void in the audience’s (Patron’s) life leads us to plot a course for filling in said void through all facets of our brand. That starts with Purpose.

This is the key. The magic bullet. The secret sauce. This is what makes a Purpose powerful. Yet we’re still left a bit directionless, with only a pinhole of light in our proverbial pitch-black room. So, let’s open the windows and doors and let the light flood in.

The key to identifying a Patron group’s areas of want and need is in a psychological phenomenon inherently baked into every single one of our individual psyches. These are archetypes.

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1 Throughout Mass Behaving, you’ll notice that I capitalize the words Purpose, Personality, Product, Presentation, Position, Patron, and Projection. That is because these terms refer to the layers of the Golden Lasso Framework—a marketing paradigm of my own invention. The Golden Lasso is briefly summarized on p. 19 of this book and can be read about in more detail in my book The Bullhearted Brand: Building Bullish Restaurant Brands That Charge Ahead of the Herd.

Chapter 02

What are archetypes?

If you’re well steeped in the basics of archetypes, you may be tempted to flip past this section. I encourage you to hold back that urge. Developing a better understanding of archetypes and what they truly are starts here. I have to presume that you’re reading this book because you have a sense that you may not fully grasp these powerful psychological motivators. Even if it’s a refresher, I promise that reading this section will have some benefit.

History

Archetypes are the hidden treasures of our collective psyche—the ancient scripts etched within our souls that whisper universal truths, shaping our thoughts, actions, and the narratives of human existence and the human condition. Picture this: the canvas of our minds adorned with recurring symbols and themes, each with a profound resonance, revealing the threads that weave humanity’s tapestry. But where did they come from?

Enter Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst of yore, who ventured beyond the realms of traditional psychology. In his quest to decipher the depths of the human psyche, Jung discerned patterns, subtle yet undeniably pervasive, that recur across cultures, eras, and individual experiences. From the annals of his introspection, the notion of archetypes emerged—primordial images residing within the collective unconscious, remnants of our ancestors’ experiences that have been transmitted across generations.

Archetypes are the stuff of myths, legends, dreams, and fairy tales, yes, but they’re also part of our everyday lives. They are the Hero who slays dragons and overcomes adversity, the Shadow who mirrors our repressed desires and fears, the Wise Old Sage whose wisdom transcends time, and the Lover whose passions ignite the fires of our hearts. These symbols, Jung posited, are not mere coincidences but intrinsic to our human experience, transcending cultural boundaries, language barriers, and the sands of time itself.

But how did Jung make this discovery? It was through his relentless excavation of the depths of both his patients’ minds and his own, a journey that unearthed recurring motifs and patterns that defied explanation through personal history alone. These were the seeds of the collective unconscious, latent within us all, influencing our thoughts and actions without our