Resumo

Consumers tend to prefer brands with similar personalities to natures that represent their desired way of life, the ideal being they would like to imitate (Aaker, 1997). One way of analyzing brand personas is through their association with Carl Jung’s (1959) archetypes, described as recognizable behavioral patterns based on instinct. However, there exists a gap in literature when it comes to acknowledging the usage of brand archetypes through different mediums, specifically social media.

Knowing that brands highlight their personality attributes in order to appear more humanlike in social media, the purpose of this research is to examine the application of brand humanization from the perspective of Jung’s archetypes in such a platform, mainly the dialog-focused X, formerly known as Twitter. This objective aims to also provide insights in how they create brand personas.

In this section, we discuss methods of brand humanization, such as anthropomorphization, and how they evolve into the creation of a brand personality, before delving into Jungian concepts such as archetypes and personas and tying them together into how they can be applied to brands.

A qualitative content analysis study was performed through the examination of popular brands that had garnered significant success in the social media platform X was performed, identifying behavioral semiotic codes present in the posts of the chosen brands. A total of 450 posts were analyzed, 50 for each selected brand. Characteristics attributed to Mark and Pearson’s (2001) brand archetypes were the first-degree codes, with the archetypes themselves being the second-degree ones.

We explain how the selected brands utilize their personas to perform marketing on X. The numbers of each characteristic appearance by brand are quantified and compared, the data results being used to identify patterns of appearance.

The findings suggest that, while a correlation between popularity and frequency of appearance cannot be identified, some characteristics of archetypes are more favored than others. Choosing to represent certain archetypes doesn't mean a brand will use every associated characteristic. Some brands utilize their X account to advertise products whose codes don’t match their main one, differentiating the brand of the company and the brand of the product.

Aaker, J. L. (1997). Dimensions of brand personality. Journal of marketing research, 34(3), 347-356. Jung, C. G. (1959). Archetypes of the collective unconscious. In The archetypes and the collective unconscious (Vol. 9). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mark, M., & Pearson, C. S. (2001). The hero and the outlaw: Building extraordinary brands through the power of archetypes. McGraw Hill Professional