Language of Persuasion

Amongst the many other things I learnt in the first year, one of the most interesting seminars talked about the language of persuasion. Even more interesting, was the introduction to archetypes. Brands world wide will always want, if they don't already have, a strong sense of identity. Usually this mirrors the hopes and aspirations of their target consumer, after they've studied and researched typical habits of these potential customers.

We also make connections to certain actors/actresses, as they are passed around the same sort of TV programmes and same genre of film. Usually if you ever play the bad guy and you play it well, you'll probably always play the bad guy. We also categorise real people like characters too. These familiar characters are called Jungian archetypes. Businesses create strategies to work out what matches the personality types of their target consumer as it costs a lot of money to start a campaign in the first place. In general, this is made easier when they can be organised into the following archetypes:

- The Innocent

- The Hero

- The Regular Guy

- The Nurturer

- The Creator

- The Explorer

- The Rebel

- The Lover

- The Magician

- The Ruler

- The Jester

- The Sage

Now, considering I'm at University with only Netflix and other more frowned upon ways of seeing things that I'm missing on TV at home, I've had to use some of the most obvious adverts to demonstrate my point.

This 2013 campaign on of the signature Roses De Chloé perfume has obvious elements of seduction, but also presents the element of innocence that is a killer couple when seducing any man. The use of three, similar looking women suggests family, possibly sisters? close knit anyhow. Which makes me want to label this The Innocent.

Another perfume advert uses a sexy, allusive character using the fragrance to seduce a male. It's both intense and romantic, leaving me to label this The Lover.

This particular advert shows the experimentation of a young woman and her hair style. Showing a potential consumer how they can change they look often engages The Creator.

Observations such as these are simple and easy, and once you know what you're looking for they'll be more obvious than ever. However, there are also a similar set of archetypes for people and in a seminar we took a quiz on http://www.archetypes.com/quiz to determine what archetype belonged to us.

Naturally, as fashion students most of our results involved Creative and Tastemaker, although every time I take this quiz the results are different. Quizzes like these could really be utilized by brands when researching their potential markets and consumers.