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.
The sequence, in order. Each step 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? Find the characters the company can credibly inhabit, then choose which one leads against the open lane. The method runs it in four jobs: Find, Position, Build, Diagnose.
- Build How does the character show up? Build it across five surfaces: name, verbal identity, visual identity, behavior, and experience. The story, the enemy it names, the proof it uses, logos, ethos, and pathos all live inside language.
- The Brand Diagnostic Is the brand expressing the character it claims? The integrity check over everything above it. The tool reads five surfaces you can observe from the outside: campaigns, web, social, offer, and sales and service. The sixth read, whether the organization internally lives it, needs someone inside the building.
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 the archetype step. Twelve archetypes, one per page, deep. Plus the method for finding and building among them, and the Brand Diagnostic for testing whether the chosen character is actually being expressed.
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.