Context · The strategy sequence
Where this fits.
Archetype work is one phase of a larger brand strategy sequence. Presenting it as the whole is the most common mistake in the field, and it is what makes serious strategists dismiss archetype work as a parlor trick. This page names the sequence, and the specific work this site does not do.
The sequence.
Five phases, in order. Each answers exactly one question. Each hands its result to the next.
- ICP Who is this for? Define the buyer in full — self-image, needs, assumptions, refusals. Everything downstream serves this person.
- Category Map Which role is open? Find the archetype role uncontested in your category. Removes ego from the character choice.
- Brand Archetype You are here Who does the brand play? Choose the character against the open lane, refined through the four-question method.
- Persuasion / Narrative How does the character move people? The story the brand tells. The enemy it names. The proof it uses. Logos, ethos, pathos, all carried by narrative.
- Expression / Operating System Does the company actually live it? The integrity audit over everything above it. Read across external, internal, and employer brand.
A brand is a character, chosen against an open lane in its category, that tells a persuasive story to a customer it already understands, and it is only real when the company lives that character on the inside.
What this site does, and what it does not.
This site is the reference library for Phase 3. Twelve archetypes, one per page, deep. Plus the four-question method for choosing among them, and the Expression Audit for testing whether the chosen character is actually being lived.
This site does not resolve ICP. That work happens upstream, before you arrive. If you have not defined the buyer, the character choice will be a founder's mirror, not a strategy.
This site does not build the Category Map. That work also happens upstream. If you have not mapped which archetype roles are already owned in your category, the character you pick will be the one you wish you were, not the one you can credibly play.
This site does not write the narrative. That work happens downstream. The archetype names who the brand is; narrative is how the character moves people. They are different acts.
Holding these lines is what makes archetype work strategy instead of decoration.
A note on the borrowed pieces.
The twelve archetypes are inherited. The wheel and the four families come from Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson, in their 2001 book The Hero and the Outlaw, which is in turn built on Carl Jung. The Expressed / Suppressed / Distorted rubric is where the work here departs from the tradition, and it is the piece the field has needed for two decades.
Candor about where the frameworks are approximate is not a disclaimer. It is the position. In a category selling easy certainty, being honest about the limits is what makes the method trustworthy enough to build authority on.