An effective brand personality is something your audience can relate to and interact with. In order to get this feeling, your brand personality should have a set of human characteristics that make your brand more human.
Innocent brands promote safety and yearn for paradise. Your brand’s main talents are faith and optimism, so you will want to be honest and true to your image. Use those skills to show a better view of life and strive to always see the good in people and in life. Your brand’s voice is optimistic, honest, and humble and your brand's strongest motivations are safety and security.
Before you get deeper into the innocent archetype, there are some questions I want you to think about and link your answers back to your brand strategy...
What does the word safety mean to you and your audience?
What adjectives you would use to describe your brand?
What is the purpose behind your brand’s existence?
What are some brands you look up to and aspire to become like?
What drives the innocent?
As the proud owner of a brand with an innocent personality, you will want to have something behind your brand to help push it forward and to grow. These are your brand purpose and brand vision.
Remember that brand purpose is internal, it is what drives you and your brand to continue, and brand vision is the long-term goal you want to achieve.
Providing safety
Safety is what is most important to all innocent personality types. Have you put any importance on that word or the meaning behind it?
Note. Keep in mind that safety can be understood in many different ways. It can be a physical want to be kept away from harm, an inner want to be cozy under a blanket during a storm outside, or an idealistic vision to end violence in the world.
Whatever your definition or reason behind it, look deeper into yourself and your brand and pull that innovation out.
Important! Safety does not have to mean being locked away or coddling! It can be an inner sense of safety regarding a specific journey or task.
The reason you come up with, this is what you want to talk about with your audience and provide to them.
Safety
The Innocent drives
When you were thinking of adjectives to describe your brand, these can be linked or related to your brand values. You already know all about brand values and you have your own and a few brand value statements.
Now, I want you to link the innocent personality drives and your own brand values.
Simple
Ethical
Happy
Honest
Positive
Important! These are the drives behind innocent personalities. If they don’t match your brand values, that is okay! Instead of looking at them as value words, look at them as the result you and your clients will have after working together.
As the innocent archetype, your goal would be to be happy. Your brand can do this through the gifts of...
Faith and optimism
The Innocent brand represents a positive personality with an optimistic outlook on life and the world. In order to portray that, you want your brand to be pushed forward by these five drives and to share them openly with your audience. Their core desire is to experience paradise.
The innocent purpose
Every brand is as unique as the person that stands behind it. Even so, we use categories and archetypes, and different classifications to better understand how we fit with others.
Keeping that in mind, I want you to review the purpose behind innocent brands and compare it with your own brand purpose.
Find or realize happiness
You can do this by showing your honest and wholesome view of the world and fostering that happy feeling in your audience. Your strongest strategy is to do things right, ethically, simply, and honestly.
The Innocent examples
When you were working on your brand positioning, you got to look for aspirations for what you want your brand to become. You already have your own goals, but I want you to take a look at these three examples of innocent brands...
Aveeno
Dove
CocaCola
I want you to ask yourself if any of them could be an aspiration for your own brand and if so, how.
Note. Remember that we are not talking about the product here, but the brand personality that sells it (or the cost of said products and services).
How to reach out as an innocent
As an innocent personality type, your brand attracts a wide range of audiences. No matter who you are addressing, though, your goal is to help them grow.
Here are some tips on how to talk to your audience and put your innocent personality forward, as someone who is honest and optimistic...
Use simple, honest, and positive language.
Utilize inspiring and motivational quotes.
Provide them with a safe space where they can connect.
Amuse and entertain your audience to bring out their best.
Communicate abstract ideas with the help of imagination.
Motivate others for peace, harmony, and collaboration.
Show a sense of wonder and awe of the world.
Embody a sense of renewal, inner peace, and nostalgia.
Inspire and stress the importance of paradise of the mind.
Become a source of inspiration and motivation.
Connect with
Since the main goal of the innocent is to be happy, this brand personality attracts a wide range of audiences, including most of the other archetypes. Below is a list of a few audience archetypes that are attracted to innocent brands and what caregiver brands can use to appeal to them...
Hero. Empowerment, inspiration, opportunity, worth, recognition
Jester. Fun, happiness, entertainment, memorable, positivity, laughter
Lover. Attractive, passion, desire, belonging, intimacy
Everyperson. Belonging, normality, connection, honesty, friendliness
Caregiver. Warmth, thoughtfulness, generosity, safety, security
Creator. Freedom, choices, inspire, imagination, innovation
Start creating content for your audience
As part of your brand strategy, you already know who your people are and where to find them. Now, it's time to talk to them! Here are a few content and conversation prompts you can use to display your innocent personality...
Life is simple and simplicity is elegant
The most wholesome things in life are unadulterated and pure
The best way to cheer yourself up is to cheer somebody else up
Explain your yearning for paradise and perfection
Tip. When it comes to writing or choosing these motivational quotes, avoid any negatives. For example, “exist to be happy, not to impress” gives off the same feeling as the rest at the beginning, until we get to the "not impress”. Neither of these words give the happy, buoyant feeling you want to get across, so take them out of your vocabulary for now.
You can display your innocent archetype through two main strategies...
Display wholesome virtue
Foster feel-good spirit
The Innocent voice
Your brand voice is a unique element of your brand’s communication with your audience. It remains consistent throughout all the content that you create.
You will be working on finding your brand voice after this module, however, your brand voice has input from both you and your brand personality. In addition, a brand voice is often characterized by both what it is and what it isn’t. Here are some examples of innocent voices...
Optimistic, but not expectant
Honest, but not law-abiding
Humble, but not timid
Lively, but not chipper
The Innocent character
You now know a lot more about your brand personality. You have a character, a brand that is a separate entity that will interact and befriend your audience. This character has its own goals, values, and ambitions, as you’ve discovered when working on your brand positioning and core.
But, if we want to make them more human, we want to add a bit extra to it.
At the moment, your brand’s personality is too perfect and structured. Your brand can become more human by being open with its fears, weaknesses, and characteristics.
Knowing these, will help you battle against them and, since there is no person out that doesn’t have these, you will make your brand more approachable to your audience.
The Innocent weaknesses
The things you should be most worried about are appearing too gullible or naïve to the point of boredom and being called out if you don’t follow your voice. Make sure to always come across as happy, pure, and hopeful, but leave room for more. Be careful from doing something wrong that will provoke punishment.
The five things you should avoid in your brand are...
Anguish
Depravity
Complexity
Deceit
Negativity.
Now consider your audience.
You’ve written their problems and emotions in your ideal client bio, so take a look at all the negative emotions in there and see if they connect with any of these fears. If so, then these are things you can help them with, as they are dangerous for you and your brand too.
Niching the innocent down
Twelve personalities may seem very limiting, especially when you start thinking that there are almost 8 billion people on earth, half of them are on social media, and all of them fall into these twelve categories.
However, you can narrow your personality down to make it more unique to you. Every archetype has three levels and five sub-archetypes.
Note. Keep in mind that both of these are not static! They change over time as you and your brand evolve.
Innocent levels
The three different levels for each archetype are based on the development within that personality. That means the lower level is less mature while the higher level is more developed.
This is linked to your brand’s vision, figuring out what point you are at now and how your brand personality can grow with your brand, the closer you get to your vision.
Level one. Feel paradise is their birthright and not having it makes them angry or act childish.
Level two. Seek to reinvent or renew themselves through new beginnings.
Level three. create their own paradise from within, not from outer experiences.
Innocent sub-archetypes
There are five related sub-archetypes within the innocent archetype, which emerge based on particular attributes that are visible within that archetype. That means each sub-archetype has different attributes. This is linked to your brand values and helps you split yourself from the collective within your archetype.
Innocent
With an unbridled sense of wonder, the innocent sees the world as honest and wholesome. Innocents embody a sense of renewal, inner peace, and nostalgia. They are pure, virtuous, and faultless, aiming for reaching perfection because they see it all around them. This can, unfortunately, lead them to avoid or deny any problems that they encounter.
Child
Bursting with energy and a positive attitude, the child is easily amused, entertained, or fascinated. Children demonstrate a relentless belief in the goodness of humanity and are open to all possibilities. Their curious nature tends to bring out the best in others, but they can be easily influenced, which leads to them being unable to grow up and assume responsibility.
Dreamer
With the ability to be swept away by possibilities, the dreamer communicates abstract ideas with the help of a vivid imagination. Possessing the faith of a child, dreams prefer to live in the paradise of the mind, believing the best is out there and in their minds. However, dreams lack the structure necessary to execute ideas in the real world.
Idealist
The idealist is driven by the belief that the individual can make the world a better place and believes in the possibility of positive change. Idealists are motivated by the ideals of harmony and peace, cooperation and collaboration. Unfortunately, they tend to view the world through rose-coloured glasses and choose not to see potential dangers.
Muse
As its name implies, the muse is a source of inspiration and serves as a conduit to knowledge and understanding. They serve as a source of inspiration as well as connection, reaching for paradise through the collective unconscious. Although muses excel at motivation, their unfocused energy can sometimes bring chaos and disarray.