Archetypal branding of Wall’s ice-cream to Millennials in Ireland.

Abstract

Modern-day marketers are operating in a global, twenty-four hour market place, inundated with similar offerings. To succeed is to differentiate oneself from the competition, and in order to do so a company needs to become a brand; they need to go beyond the logo and develop a meaning system – a personality. One approach to the personification of brands is archetypal theory which helps a company develop a consistent brand around an archetype that acts as a “guiding star” or “true north” for all communications and enables a deeper emotional connection with consumers. This research explores how a suitable archetype for a brand is identified as applied to Unilever’s Heartbrand ice-creams in Ireland. This was achieved with a multi method approach that examined the brand the company had built alongside the brand they hoped to become, as well as consumers’ perceptions of the brand. This research discovered that the company had built a consistent brand in their previous communications to consumers prior to focusing their marketing efforts on branding, but that since turning their focus towards brand era marketing they had diluted their meaning system. The implications of this research were twofold. Firstly, that archetypal branding would serve to bring the company back on brand for all current and future campaigns; and that the archetype that their “true north” should be built around was a combination of the Trickster and the Enthusiast. And secondly, that there is sufficient potential for this approach to play a role in the creation and management of brands.