The elements
- Mission — why the brand exists, what it does for whom.
- Vision — the future it wants to help create.
- Values — the principles that guide choices, even when they come at a cost.
- Personality — what the brand would be like if it were a person.
- Tone of voice — how it speaks: register, rhythm, the words it uses and the ones it avoids.
- Archetype — the underlying character that gives consistency to everything else.
Archetypes
The idea comes from Carl Gustav Jung: recurring figures we all recognize, in the stories of every culture. In branding, the most widespread version counts twelve: the Innocent, the Explorer, the Sage, the Hero, the Outlaw, the Magician, the Everyman, the Lover, the Jester, the Caregiver, the Creator and the Ruler.
An archetype isn’t a label to pin on: it’s an aid to being consistent. A brand that calls itself an Explorer but talks like a Ruler confuses its audience. There’s often a primary archetype and a secondary one that softens it.
How to build it
1. Start from what the brand already is
History, products, behaviors, how customers describe it, how it communicates today. Identity is discovered before it’s invented: an identity that’s declared but not lived doesn’t hold up.
2. Distinguish facts from inferences
Some elements can be read in documents and behaviors; others are interpretations. Flagging what’s inferred avoids building a strategy on a hypothesis presented as a certainty.
3. Check for consistency
What the brand says it is must match what the market sees and what the company does. Where they don’t match, that’s where the work lies.
4. Imagine how it can evolve
An identity isn’t static. It pays to imagine evolutions of different scope — from the most cautious to the most radical — and for each one ask what changes in communication, what to do and what to avoid.
5. Put it into words
A tagline, a few guiding sentences for the tone of voice, examples of dos and don’ts. If the identity doesn’t translate into concrete guidance, the people writing content won’t know how to use it.
The most common mistakes
- Generic values. “Quality, passion, innovation” — everyone claims them: they don’t set you apart.
- A purely aspirational identity. If it isn’t lived through the products and the people, the market notices.
- The archetype as a costume. It should be used to create consistency, not to imitate a famous brand.
- No operational translation. A document nobody uses to write a post is not an identity.
