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Designing The Brand Archetype: Examining The Role Of Jungian Collective

Unconscious In The Creative Customisation Of Brands

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DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i6.06

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 The International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Invention
Volume 3 issue 6 2016 page no.2228-2239 ISSN: 2349-2031
Available Online At: http://valleyinternational.net/index.php/our-jou/theijsshi

Designing The Brand Archetype: Examining The Role Of Jungian

Collective Unconscious In The Creative Customisation Of Brands
Stephen T.F. Poon
Taylor‟s University, Malaysia

ABSTRACT: Understanding the psychological concept of the collective unconscious and its association
with our subconscious minds were psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s lasting legacy in the field of analytical
psychology. This study discusses the attributes of the Jungian collective unconscious and the creation
of consumer archetypes for branding concepts, and to outline the designer’s role in the customisation
of brands and products in sense-making for brand development, where it is argued, such customisation
can help to activate imaginations that determine behaviour, influence attitudes, and at the same time,
present design in its ideal functional form. Since mental and psychological processes are at work in
consumers’ decision-making, tapping into the consumers’ unconscious levels of meaning-making and
helping them link ideas and perceptions would help brands close the gap of cultural, social and
behavioural distances among consumer segments, and to develop more effective, memorable and
intuitive global brand percept’s where the use of brand archetypal paradigms make experiential
branding possible. The case study examines the Coca-Cola brand, and how archetypes of the collective
unconscious are mediated in the advertising communication and brand marketing strategies of the
global beverage company. The aim is to identify and demonstrate the application of Jung’s collective
unconscious in its branding, and to discuss the specific archetypes at work which distinguishes its
position as a personalised, unique and preferred brand within the consumer’s frame of mind. The
paper proposes the use of brand archetype methodologies such as symbolic construction of brand
associations, narrative stories, myths and emotional advertising to discover a product’s brand
meanings, and to demonstrate how designers can further tap this methodology of attitudinal research in
order to develop and enhance creative customisation of brand archetypes that result in personalised,
meaningful, trustworthy and intuitively universal products.
Keywords: brand, marketing, archetype, collective unconscious, customisation

pp.159-180). The concepts of consumer

I. INTRODUCTION
Attention is increasingly paid today to the
„consumption explosion‟: a breathless wealth and
span of goods and services that cater to our
individualised needs. Among the world‟s most
successful products, one asset that denotes the
clearest message to its audiences is the brand.
The management of brands is a two-edged sword:
interaction between customers and a believed-in
product often escalates from a random series of
testimonials into narratives that can attract
devotees and reinforce authenticity of the social
and personal consumption experience (Brakus,
Schmitt and Zarantonello, cited in Posavac, 2014:
behavioural psychology and marketing
optimisation is aimed at resourceful leverage of
knowledge about consumer attitudes and decision
making for brand marketing, yet its practitioners
readily admit to difficulties in annotating and
measuring its outcomes with validity and
credibility (Posavac, pp.228-232). Rather than
explain the universal codes of brands strictly from
its social science perspective, this paper will move
the scale of discussion to consumers‟ unconscious
behavioural and instinctual responses to a brand
identity that acknowledges subconscious
influences, and factors that affect the behavioural
dimensions shared by consumers in the

DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i6.6
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unconscious realms in their choice of, and
engagement with, brands.
Attention is increasingly paid today to the
„consumption explosion‟: a breathless wealth and
span of goods and services that cater to our
individualised needs. Among the world‟s most
successful products, one asset that denotes the
clearest message to its audiences is the brand.
The management of brands is a two-edged sword:
interaction between customers and a believed-in
product often escalates from a random series of
testimonials into narratives that can attract
devotees and reinforce authenticity of the social
and personal consumption experience (Brakus,
Schmitt and Zarantonello, cited in Posavac, 2014:
pp.159-180). The concepts of consumer
behavioural psychology and marketing
optimisation is aimed at resourceful leverage of
knowledge about consumer attitudes and decision
making for brand marketing, yet its practitioners
readily admit to difficulties in annotating and
measuring its outcomes with validity and
credibility (Posavac, pp.228-232). Rather than
explain the universal codes of brands strictly from
its social science perspective, this paper will move
the scale of discussion to consumers‟ unconscious
behavioural and instinctual responses to a brand
identity that acknowledges subconscious
influences, and factors that affect the behavioural
dimensions shared by consumers in the
unconscious realms in their choice of, and
engagement with, brands.
A. Purpose and Research Inquiry
To enlighten design educators and the creative
faculties‟ research community on human
behavioural modes that have become instinctual
drives for how people think, act and talk through
archetypes, the purpose of this paper is to consider
the potential of brand archetypes in order to
understand their roles, values, social functions and
symbolic meanings in the development of
effective brand communication that bear universal
yet intuitively cultural connections.
Several key questions arose in the process of
considering the possibility of brand archetypes as
drivers of symbolic meanings for mass marketing
of consumer goods;
 How do mental and psychological processes
work in consumer decision making?
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 Are there elements of the collective
unconscious at work in meaning making for
consumer brands?
 How could designing positive brand
archetypes play a role in communicating
brands creatively?
 How can elements of the collective
unconscious enable businesses to close social,
cultural and behavioural distances and make
strategic marketing management decisions
that will affect outcomes and make brands
more intuitive, personal yet universal?
The visibility of a branding concept makes it for
an organisation of vital importance to use
collective unconscious that fits the positioning
strategy in every possible way. This study
examines if the colours in brand development can
express an archetypical identity.
II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
AND STUDIES
Through empirical research in experimental
psychology, psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung in
the 1930‟s produced extensive treatises in
understanding the powerful relational effects of
the human ego, behaviour, and the mythical
patterns and structures embedded into social
consciousness (Haule, 2011b: p.19).
Along with Joseph Campbell, the author of The
Power of Myth (1991), Jung studied and presented
what in his day was negatively typecast as
unscientific research - a brand of “folk psychology
outside the mainstream of Western cultural and
intellectual discussion” (Haule, 2011a: p.6).
Jung, in tracing the shared patterns of thought,
symbols and myths, linked them to the archetypes
of the collective human imagination, exposited
substantially on personality, and this divergent
approach from standard methods of social science
studies is not acknowledged to be „mainstream‟ by
the scientific community (Haule, 2011a: p.6),
since it was argued that the precise relationships
between symbols and their archetypes could not
be intellectually formulation or explained (von
Franz, 1964). In contributing his idea of altered
states of consciousness, Jung painted for modern
civilisation one of the earliest controversy-filled
debates about evolutionary psychology, by
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claiming that our innate personal propensities
(actions, thoughts, behaviours) are biological
archetypes of culturally-determined
consciousness, inherited from our ancestors:
“A group experience takes place on a
lower level of consciousness than the
experience of an individual. This is due
to the fact that, when many people gather
together to share one common emotion,
the total psyche emerging from the group
is below the level of the individual psyche.
[…] The psychology of a large crowd
inevitably sinks to the level of mob
psychology. If, therefore, I have a so-
called collective experience as a member
of a group, it takes place on a lower level
of consciousness than if I had the
experience by myself alone.” (Jung,
translated by Hull, 1981: p.123)
Dr John Ryan Haule (2011)‟s two-volume
treatises on Jungian analytical psychology notes
that experiences show the effects of the collective
unconscious more clearly than others, claiming
that cultural inputs, in the form of stimuli and
biologically inherited human behaviours, were not
measurable (p.58). Since cultural determinism
was inherently hardwired in our psychological
being, our mental blank slate (or tabula rasa)
evolves over time to determine our behaviour
when archetypal patterns of culture “fills [the
human mind] with its own specific adaptations”
(p.9).
Archetypes, as defined by Jung, are the psychical
“substrate of human nature”; in essence, the
cultural “contents of the collective unconscious”
in every individual (Jung, 1981: p.4). Because
they exist in our minds as myths and fantasy
images, archetypes cannot be viewed as
humankind‟s inherited ideas, but may be shown to
occur through a range of ”inherited possibilities”
of ideas (Jung, 1981: pp.66-76).
Perceivable only as forms, archetypes are symbols
and motifs which potentiate behaviour, and in
their associations with our conscious attitudes,
decisions and cultural systems, are categorically
and universally perceived as meaningful, and
therefore influential to collective experiences
within cultures, albeit human or among animal
species (Haule, 2012). Totalling twelve,
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archetypal images of universal human instincts
are represented by mythic characters. The human
ego, soul and self are the key sets driven by
motivations quite distinct from rational analysis of
conscious minds – these represent the
unconscious patterns of human attempts to fulfil
of personal desire, freedom, social need and order
(Haule, 2011a: p.67). Our consciousness of
symbols and myths range from attempts to
understand their purposes and functions, how they
determine and regulate personal and social
behaviours, and help in decision making. Some
researchers argue that the collective conception of
symbols and myths lies hidden, as “people do not
realise that these ideas are present in their minds”
(Franzen and Moriarty, 2009: p.278).
Psychology professors Pickren and Rutherford
(2010) reviewed the history of modern
psychology and found literature reveals that
differences exist and are, in fact, culturally-
embedded, in the way modern Western society
make demands between how individuals act,
think, feel and talk in their private lives (a concept
called the private self) and how they do the same
in their exterior, public self as members of the
commercial society that had gradually emerged
from the early 18th-century onwards (p.27). Such
differences apply in understanding relationships,
cultural groups, ownership of capital and
resources, goods consumes, collective needs,
individual desires, etc. This implication of
differences (both real and perceived) has leaded
some social science scholars to discover and
regard the various contextual determinants of
attitudes and behaviour in people‟s social
construction of meaning, including archetypes.
At the same time, consumer psychology
researchers add value to these hypothetical
patterns by looking for the psychological
processes of behaviours and decision making,
which is a necessary prerequisite of how life is to
be measured for its quality and progress.
Archetypal elements are clearly evident in the
symbolic construction of meanings. In recent
attempts to close the gap between theoretical
knowledge found in literature and its application
in consumer marketing, a notable perspective
variance among practitioners of behavioural
sciences, consumer psychology and marketing
management have implied that decision making
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by production-oriented businesses has become
ambiguous, and the cause of this may be that
knowledge of the consumer is increasingly hard to
pin down and comprehend, particularly if such
insight does not prove relevant in enhancing
organisational value (Posavac, 2014: pp.4-11).
This will be further examined in the next section.
A. Why Study Archetypes and the Symbolic
Construction of Brand Meaning?
Popular culture had always infused large helpings
of archetypes into mythmaking narratives, and this
phenomena can be observed in contemporary
entertainment content such as movies,
commercials, TV shows, comics, video games, as
well as books, where the personalities of actors
and characters are the primary seats of
relationships and conflicts that are consequential
to the storyline or action (Rushing and Frentz,
1993; Voytilla, 1999). At the dawn of the 21st-
century, the growing use of images of global
representation have suffused into corporate
advertising, broadcasting, managed events, and
media industries, and these have oriented citizens
into a range of „citizenships‟, from cultural, social
to ecological, thus outgrowing the bounded
concept of national citizenry, each form of which
have turned into engaging topical discussions and
references (Urry, 1999: pp.321-322).
Symbolically, as Urry (1999) argues, the context
of relations between textual images and how they
are perceived by each user and societies at large
will require individuals to carve out a sense of
personal place in the global circulation of
collective identities that span cultures,
environments and politics (p.318). Essentially,
what once was the ability to consume local goods,
has today evolved to an ability to “buy products,
services and icons of diverse cultures, and to then
locate them within one‟s own culture and hence to
change it in incremental ways” (p.317).
Archetypes appear in forms that bear either
categorical or specific associations. The
marketing industry would label these as brands.
Today‟s powerful branding symbols and images
are associated with, and represent, our deepest
desires, fears, fantasies and hopes (Webb, 2013).
Since studying consumption behaviours and
phenomena require the use of psychological
insights, it is valuable for researchers to discuss,
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share and appreciate how brands embody the
creed, ritual and consistency that our inner being
yearns, helping us make meaningful connections
with our instinctive selves and with others, and
this is the very element of the Jungian collective
unconscious. Insights about consumer collective
behaviours seek to understand the specific
motivations that drive them. From a management
perspective, this data is relevant, and may even
determine business success and failure. Steven
Posavac (2014: pp.200-214) cites marketing
science findings that investigates shoppers‟
abilities to cut through advertising hype by
seeking reviews and joining Internet forums,
concluding that consumers create, discuss,
interpret and share personal stories when making
choices, and curate their own experiences.
Yet, as Posavac (2014) argues, these are often
“ethereal” insights derive from the fact that
behaviours, perceptions, choices and judgments
are neither convenient nor easy to explicate when
they come under researchers‟ observation, as
consumers themselves may not appreciate what
drove them to act in certain ways. Empirical
methods such as field experiments, surveys and
observations are keen to extend theories and
produce academic theses about “potential
applicability” rather than surmise the true business
impact of knowing consumers intimately through
psychological research (p.5).
Universal perceptions of global brands are shaped
by the interplay between emotional and rational
elements; the brand owner‟s management of
communication with consumers, the associations
of symbolic archetypes, and inherent valuation
placed on the business based on credibility of
messages (Ind, 2007: p.101). Brierly (2005:
p.146) terms the value factor as important in two
ways, prominence and proximity. The use of
events, objects and people reflects prominence,
where collective recognition derives from target
market‟s recognition and shared knowledge about
products, businesses and brands. Brands also
create contextual platforms to market aspirational
lifestyles: its proximity include relationships with
specific consumer segments, and understanding
how these relations, tangible or otherwise,
legitimises the emotions that it implants into them,
ranging from sustainability concerns to social and
community welfare, moral values (happiness,
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2016

hope, courage, etc.), thus pre-empting
opportunities to gain consumer loyalty.
Not content with catering to consumers‟ “needs”
and giving them “choices”, researchers suggest
that shifting cultural resources such as youth-
biased consumption ideologies (O‟Boyle, 2006)
and postmodern socio-economic contexts are
underlying factors of consumer engagement that
deserve attention by both practitioners and
scholars (Holt, 2002). The traditionally
aggressive use of cultural authority by marketers
in “engineering and installing preferences” has led
stakeholders to articulate their objections and
resistance to the pressure to consume and
participate (Holt, 2002). One such framework
which constructs the postmodern marketplace as a
site of consumer sovereignty is the dialectical
model (Figure 1). Orchestrated trends, open
communication flows and the instability of
institutional cultures postulated by earlier
researchers are the factors taken into
consideration. The postmodern dialectical model
strategically maps the consumer‟s personal
sovereignty as the epicentre of myriad cultural
resources, symbolically interpreted and expressed
as brands (Holt, 2002).
nurturing a universal brand archetype comprising
constructed myths ranging from iconic symbols,
innovation, cultural themes and packaging design
that bespeaks consumer experience beyond utility.
This research into global Coca Cola brand
marketing activities found the existence of three
major archetypes inherent in its strategies to
customise branding approaches. The Self
archetype will firstly be presented, symbolised by
the element of subconscious, unknowing
engagement through symbolic construction of
meaning of brands for society. The Soul
archetype will then be explored in the form of
three brand experiences, namely through on-
ground activation, packaging design, and
innovation. The Ego archetype will lastly be
examined through brand experiences from the
environmental sustainability dimension. Each
will now be discussed in-depth.
B. The Self Archetype: Social Construction of
Brand Experience
In strategic internal branding, organisations apply
a scaled-down understanding of what moves its
employees to seek and prefer to work for them,
and this translates to the underlying motives
which drive corporate image buy-in, perception of
core values, and brand commitment (Ind, 2007:
pp.160-164). On the other hand, public
recognition of a brand‟s personality is through
impression: crucially, its name, a symbolic design
element such as a logo, an airtime jingle on the
radio or television (Ryan, 2013), in advertising
commercials, as well as other less structured or
tangible factors.

Figure 1 Holt (2012) Dialectical Model of Branding

and Consumer Culture
To leverage its legendary success of more than a
century, Coca-Cola increasingly needs to prove
itself worthy of the substantive brand image built
over years of advertising, promotion and
marketing (Coca-Cola Journey, n.d.). From
controlling “unpredictable forces” that has
constantly beleaguered the 130 year-old company,
Coca-Cola Inc. has evolved from a “sloppy” and Figure 2 Hard Times Coca Cola television
“undisciplined” organisation (Hays, 2005) to an commercial (2010)
intuitively managed market leader through
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The postmodern dialectical model of brand
communication acknowledges the impact of real-
world socioeconomic conditions (Holt, 2002).
Brand marketing is constructed to validate the
advertiser‟s social messages. For Coca-Cola, the
Jungian Self archetype was culled as the setting
for a televised commercial using the global
financial meltdown in a 2010 Superbowl
commercial, Hard Times (Figure 2). Advertising
agency Wieden + Kennedy used characters from
the long-running American cartoon series, The
Simpsons, to narrate a sweet tale of a ruined
billionaire mediating his sense of financial and
esteem loss through the simple enjoyment of the
soda beverage in the company of friends who
share his sorrow. The commercial heightens the
capitalist-moral conflict by portraying an
appreciation that consumption motivations are
possible during economic recession, and affirms
the necessity of corporate empathy for socio-
economic contexts to improve brand perceptions.
The idea that individuals in local communities
„suffer collectively‟ detaches consumerism from
its often-conceived role as socio-economic
divisor, but one that empowers (Urry, 1999). In
and through its role as cultural agent for values
indoctrination, advertising is designed to imprint
messages on consumers that play on their
“fixation … the unending love-hate relationship
with commercial appeals” that thus forms its
“public face” (Turow, 2013: p.18).
C. Soul Archetype: Designed to Connect
Coca-Cola‟s can designs in different countries are
presented to trigger and increase enthusiastic
followership. Seasons, cultures and language
differences are handmaidens for the creation of
customised designs in the systematic approach to
branding methodologies that Coca-Cola continues
to exercise, making its global appeal both quirky
and glamorous, as it represented the “flag-waving
side of America, that part that always looked
forward, not back” (Hays, 2005). Hays‟ book
was published in the same year that Coca-Cola
Inc. celebrated its 125th-anniversary, amidst
marketing fanfare and an increasingly bored
consumer marketplace that cannot distinguish
between fashionableness and functionality of the
product.
Coca-Cola hangs its world domination on
collective consumer loyalty, but this factor seems
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to be wholly disregarded in its current product
design philosophy. Consistency of global design
standards, once the turnkey of branding strategy,
is overshadowed by the customisation dogma.
For example, Coca-Cola‟s unique customised can
designs are constructed to sell fantasy, myth, and
primarily to gain interest for collectible purposes
(Figure 3). Fusing collective unconscious with
social function and product utility, Coca-Cola
uses thematic elements such as happiness, cheer
and boldness, tactically expressing the brand‟s
willingness to explore postmodern themes such as
technological capability, isolation and recognition
for diverse, fragmented communities (Advertising
Age, 2014). Interestingly, this documentation of
its cross-border cultural role has been initiated via
Asian viral commercials and games (Advertising
Age, 2014).
Figure 3 Coca-Cola Malaysia can design and the
Share My Coke Lah Campaign
This approach accords with Brierly (2005), where
the idea helped locate positive brand perceptions
in the collective unconscious dimension of its
targeted segment. The Chup! Campaign was
boosted by media engagement, where consumer-
created pictures featuring the specially designed
cans were entered into contests and winners found
themselves on billboards, thus immortalising the
universality of the brand. The effect of brand
customisation (using local cultural slang in the
Malaysian campaign) produced the targeted
responsiveness, as Malaysians conversed, shared
and posted their participation via social media
(Marketing Magazine, 2013). The design on the
cans communicates youthfulness and a cheerful
spirit through Malaysia‟s idiosyncratic “street
slang” aimed at reminding consumers of its
ubiquitous presence in urban lifestyle and culture.
The continued success and visibility of Coca-Cola
Malaysia‟s (2015) Chup! Campaign (Figure 4)
offers further proof for the use of culturally-
relevant design identities in the marketing and
branding of mass commodities.
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Figure 4 Chup! Time to Stock up Campaign for
Coca-Cola Malaysia (2015)
D. Freestyle and EKOCENTER: Innovate for
Opportunity and Engagement
Target audiences denied options are confused
about mass marketing approaches; this
manipulation is in fact the mechanism that allows
brand owners to control the distribution of
products and services at a price that consumers are
willing to pay (Ind, 2007: p.15). The mechanism
of persuading using symbols associated with
social and psychological appeals, trigger the
subconscious to seek goods from reputable
sources, and a brand‟s raison d'être is to serve
those seeking reasons for their choice (Ind: p.19).
Substantial innovation requires established
companies to seek new grounds and new norms,
and in the case of Coca-Cola, it was the
reinvention of the soda fountain.
Leveraging on traditional, digital and social
communication platforms, Freestyle relates to the
brand-fans‟ sharing initiatives by customising
traditional soda machines, making it a sleek
proposition for retailers while bringing the
interactive element of design product into a new
retail form (Invetech, n.d.). Freestyle rolled out in
2009 (Figure 5), where the blend of concentrated
ingredients with water and sweeteners enables
customers to create a hundred possible flavoured
soda beverages on-the-spot Wilson, 2009). The
sodas are dispensed via PUREPOUR™, adapting
the micro-dosing technology invented by
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entrepreneur Dean Kamen to measure precise
dosages of chemotherapy drugs for medical
application (Higginbotham, 2003). Freestyle is
the first phase of what Coca-Cola sees as the
future of customisation, where customers self-
serve drinks using the Freestyle app to mix their
own soda flavours by interacting through a
touchscreen as well as through their phones, and
are able to view flavour popularity among their
friends (Miller, 2011).
Figure 5 Coca-Cola Freestyle Soda Fountain
In terms of design, the digital interface was
designed to be as intuitive as possible. The
characteristic dynamic ribbon underlines the
smoothness of drink flow, a universally-
recognised voice of the brand. The dispenser
captures information regarding purchases:
frequency, locations, and time and funnels all data
back to Coca-Cola‟s base in Atlanta. Freestyle
has received unanimous praise by the design
community, generating enormous buzz for the
brand (Miller, 2011).
In the process of innovating Freestyle, the
company took its collaboration with Kamen
further: incorporating the Slingshot water
purification innovation into the Ekocenter
dispensing kiosk, and drawing up licensing
agreements with local entrepreneurs in Africa,
Asia and Latin America to reach isolated
communities with difficulties accessing clean
drinking water (Coca-Cola Ekocenter, 2013;
Coca-Cola Sustainability, n.d.). Women are
trained to operate the “downtown in a box”
Ekocenters (Foster, 2014). Coca Cola, sensing
this ground-breaking opportunity to fulfil its
corporate social responsibility, was open to
relinquish intellectual property over its brand and
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product formula, in order to gain “reputational
boost from being associated with a great
humanitarian story” (Ellis, 2010).
E. Ego Archetype – Environmental
Consciousness: Green, the New Red
The ecological (or „green‟) concept is subsumed
into many brand marketing concepts today, which
shows a growing concern with sustainable
environmental practices as a method and model to
demonstrate a corporation‟s ethical dimensions
whether in fulfilling its social responsibility or
environmental sustainability goals (Irwin, 2015).
Capitalist corporations, for years behaving as
pollutants and bullies, act to sustain profits while
evading media and public scrutiny. To secure
special privileges under the law, through control
of advertising and media, large and powerful
corporations continue to go head-to-head with
concerned interest groups, organisations and
consumers on debates that have entered social and
public spheres as ethical consumerism dialogues,
covering issues from social, environmental,
health, human rights to worker conditions (Irwin,
2015). Consumers‟ sentiments over these issues
reveal the ego archetype as the driving psyche.
One example of Coca-Cola‟s intuitive investment
into strategic ethical marketing is the decade spent
researching and innovating PlantBottle™, a
revolutionary, recyclable PET plastic beverage
bottle comprising 30 percent plant materials using
waste from sugarcane (Figure 6), which it
unleashed in 2009, a well-appointment moment
when the world was ready to embrace
ecologically-sustainable solutions. With a 2020
goal to use PlantBottle™ in 100 percent of its
markets, the packaging‟s cost-effectiveness and
lighter carbon footprint demonstrates the
corporation‟s proclivity to envision creative ideas
that cares for the environment and contribute
towards its own long term sustainable business
strategies (Coca-Cola Introducing PlantBottle,
n.d.). By radically altering the way businesses
view sustainability initiatives, this initiative helps
identify Coca-Cola as a „green‟ brand which
addresses consumers‟ individual and collective
ecological consciousness, and by doing so, earns
high ratings on the predictor lists of consumer
intention in their preferences towards
environmentally-friendly brand choices.
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Figure 6 Coca-Cola Unveils Re-Cyclable
PlantBottle (Planet-Vending, 2015)
III. METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH
The focus of the literature studies a foundation
and as support for a new insight that summarise
and synthesise the arguments and ideas of others
with adding new contributions, Carl Jung‟s theory
of the collective unconscious, as well as the
definition of archetypes (Jung, 1991). The
phenomena of archetypes as they exist in
mainstream cultural products will also be looked
at. The existence of the collective unconscious
that determines group behaviour will be examined
through a case study of Coca Cola Inc., and how
specific archetypes are applied in the company‟s
brand marketing approaches. The research
proceeds to describe and analyse three uses of
archetypes as the visible, persuasive contexts for
the creative customisation approaches in Coca-
Cola‟s global brand marketing activities, namely
the Self, the Soul and the Ego. Critical appraisal
of qualitative studies is an essential step within a
set of implications about consumers‟ collective
unconscious in their mental and psychological
processes are considered, in an attempt to link the
designer‟s ideation and commodification of the
brand‟s social experiences with its market
advantage. This research argues that consumer
behaviour and the development of attitudinal
frames such as brand perception rests on
understanding the collective insights relevant in
consumers‟ lifestyles and conversations. The
paper concludes by articulating the benefits of
brand customisation with the use of cultural
archetypes as a potential form of brand design that
pushes marketing to be more intuitive, creative
DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i6.6
cite as: Designing The Brand Archetype: Examining The Role Of Jungian Collective Unconscious
In The Creative Customisation Of Brands; Vol.3 | Issue 06 | Pg:2228-2239
and culturally open in the complex integration of
brand management approaches.
IV. RESEARCH FINDINGS AND
DISCUSSION
This section proceeds to discuss the notion that
successful brand design should embody
customisation of meanings, as this enables brands
to capture what manufacturing data and retail
sales analytics alone cannot achieve, to surprise,
provoke, outrage or elevate every moment of
interaction into unforgettable experiences, in ways
that optimises competitiveness while seeking long
term goodwill while offering choices to their
consumers. Range and raison d‟être must never
be confused. Specific rewards for loyal brand
engagement must be the result of consistent
research to understand why consumers engage in
brands which gives them experiential satisfaction.
Trained in marketing schools and improved with
modern design education ideologies, designers
who work on consumer brands are concerned with
inherent commercial and intangible valuation of
symbols and myths in order to produce effective
communication for advertisements, branding and
marketing campaigns. Design practice must thus
comprehend that symbolic archetypes are adopted
either fully or selectively, based on the notional
meanings they bear.
Whether derived from prophetic, cultural,
symbolic or sensorial observations, designers of
experiential marketing approaches have to
distinguish what a product or brand represents for
consumers, and one way is by creating brand
stories and myths that aim to provide consumers a
range of “affective, personal, meaning-making
experiences”, perceived to be genuine
representations of what they think, feel and
believe (Franzen and Moriarty, 2009: p.280; Ind,
2007: pp.139-153). The challenge is fraught with
risks and failure because, to reiterate Posavac
(2014), many of the forces driving consumption
attitudes and behaviours are “ethereal and not
readily observed”.
In this regard, the marketing of unconscious,
instinctual experiences becomes an area of
creative contention. Annenberg School for
Communication scholar Joseph Turow (2013:
p.98) argues that customisation of products for
2236
2016
target segments imply collecting and analysing
personal or behavioural data that unwary targeted
consumers may want to know more about.
Creatives must thus not merely create content,
since the objective of their work is to meet
societal demands for functional design. The
designing process has to consider cultural
archetypes useful in commercial narratives and
product design that will satisfy audiences seeking
credibility and novelty, besides sparking interest,
affinity, memorability and other intangibles that
creates longer term value (Ind, 2007: pp.141-145).
Brands essentially need a strong sense of purpose
to demonstrate its market leadership and sound
risk management. Walking the tightrope between
managing cost-effective operations and innovating
for the future, global commodification of goods
stretches marketing goals insomuch that producers
must take up the responsibility to offer distinct
value to consumers, play in open markets,
collaborate with innovators, demonstrate
sustainable investments, and cater willingly to
market requirements by customising and
improving adaptations to meet specific needs.
To prove itself to sophisticated customers, it is
proposed that Coca-Cola makes use of brand
archetype methodologies to construct associations,
narrative stories, myths and emotional appeals,
where the aim is to move from conscious
meanings to intuition. The brand designers‟ role
is to observe, sense, research, learn and discover
what values matter to consumers, so that “people
no longer have to think about the brand but simply
know the right thing to do” (Ind, 2007: p.135).
The task of creative brand storytellers is to
understand how consumption relates to social and
economic wellbeing, and to execute authentic,
ethical brand stories through advertising, social
marketing and active interaction at various
consumer touch points as these powerful
narratives represent the collective unconscious of
brand design.
According to the Jungian model of collective
unconscious, people tend to feel safer with what
they can perceive as directly relevant to their
culture. Strong brands will show the ingenuity of
its image design by leveraging on consumers‟
tendency to find unifying meaning and
consistency in symbolic narratives. In social
groups where individuals can interchange their
DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i6.6
cite as: Designing The Brand Archetype: Examining The Role Of Jungian Collective Unconscious
In The Creative Customisation Of Brands; Vol.3 | Issue 06 | Pg:2228-2239
roles flexibly, brand ownership allows a measure
of direct control, expressing personal attributes in
interactive social experiences, and in the end, may
even shape an individual‟s personality (Franzen
and Moriarty, 2009: p.228-239).
The freedom of choice is thus an outcome of the
collective unconscious of democratic participation
in the global consumer culture, which shows an
increasing dependence on technology, information
and collaboration as the main criteria to measure
socio-economic progress (Turow, 2013: p.15).
V. CONCLUSION
The process of analysing social connections
shows the various perceptions that may exert
influence our opinions and attitudes. Carl Jung
claims, who looks outside, dreams; who looks
inside, awakes is perhaps a guiding rationale in
the continued reshaping and leadership exerted by
marketers who design brands on the social (rather
than individual consumer) platform. The
foregoing study argues that in specific cases,
designers have to steer consumers towards
purchase intention or improved brand valuation.
The collective unconscious places branding at the
heart of engagement with consumers, viewers and
audiences, but emphasising the psychological
instincts which drive us, applying this notion to
design philosophy, thoughtful arrangement with
functional purposes is the ideal of intelligent
design, the result of which will be brand messages
that affect audiences intuitively and boost social
engagement.
Clearly the days of „empire‟ brands ascending
unchallenged into great wealth are numbered
(Prendergrast, 2000: p.173). As competition
catches up with the traditional power brands and
technological flexibility allows unprecedented
individual choices and collaborative marketing
opportunities, brands need to work harder and
smarter to earn their worth. For brand owners,
the increased focus on humanising consumers
beyond viewing them as targets mean cultivating a
clear sense of the brand‟s objectives before
delivering on brand experiences. In addition,
companies need to recognise the collective and
sub-segment differences among consumer groups,
and customise the brand to capture broader
cultural experiences without neglecting individual
2237
2016
preferences. Finally, designers need to probe to
understand consumer behaviourism through the
mechanism of stimuli and reinforcements, and of
the unconscious instinctual urges of social groups.
When design meets psychology through the
creation of goods that tap our spontaneous
imagination, it improves the value perception of
the creative processes, and this forms the
fundamental design ethos that enables businesses
to gain return on investments for excellence in
branding and marketing design.
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