The Ruler - Brand archetype
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: make your br
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: make your brand more human.
Ruler brands take the top spot and stay there while waiting for their audience to catch up with them. Your brand’s talents are responsibility and leadership, which makes it easy to take charge and sound competent so others follow you. Your brand’s voice is commanding, refined, and articulated and your brand's strongest motivations are stability and control.
Before you get deeper into the ruler archetype, there are some questions I want you to think about and link your answers back to your brand strategy...
What does the word control 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 ruler?
As the proud owner of a brand with a ruler 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 control
Control is what is most important to all ruler personality types. Have you put any importance on that word or the meaning behind it?
Note. Keep in mind that control can be understood in many different ways. It can be the a physical, mental, or spiritual control over one self, over others, or over an idea or concept.
Whatever your definition or reason behind it, look deeper into yourself and your brand and pull that control out.
Important! Control does not always mean power! It can be something as simple as setting working hours and enforcing those boundaries with your clients.
The reason you come up with, this is what you want to talk about with your audience and provide to them.
Control
The ruler 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 ruler personality drives and your own brand values.
Power
Prosperity
Status
Success
Wealth
Important! These are the drives behind ruler 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 creator archetype, your goal would be to create prosperity and success. Your brand can do this through the gifts of...
Responsibility and leadership
Also, the ruler archetype is motivated by the desire for safety and security. This is done by working to get and keep power, with a core desire to control.
The ruler 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 ruler brands and compare it with your own brand purpose.
Create a prosperous and successful family or community.
You can do this by having a perfect vision of what that is and then exercising your power to achieve it for both yourself and your audience. Your strongest strategy is to exert leadership.
The Ruler 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 ruler brands...
Louis Vuitton
Rolex
Rolls Royce
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 a ruler
As a ruler 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 ruler personality forward, as a responsible leader...
Use commanding and refined language.
Share your confidence within your audience.
Create productive and harmonious environments.
Remain controlled and proper in the public eye.
Use wisdom to challenge the wrongs.
Provide structure to society or environments.
Be compassionate and just in the same sentence.
Use research and strategy to back your ideas up.
Deal with complex issues to restore stability.
Maintain order and provide protection.
Take care of everyone in your community.
Connect with
Since the main goal of the ruler is to provide control, 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 caregiver brands and what caregiver brands can use to appeal to them...
Innocent. Trust, honesty, positivity, safety, connection, inner beauty
Sage. Truth, knowledge, wisdom, intelligence, factual
Magician. Transformation, opportunity, fantasy, knowledge, mystery
Hero. Empowerment, inspiration, opportunity, worth, recognition
Lover. Attractive, passion, desire, belonging, intimacy
Everyperson. Belonging, normality, connection, honesty, friendliness
Caregiver. Warmth, thoughtfulness, generosity, safety, security
Start creating content for your audience
As a ruler brand, you are probably more than aware of how to talk to your people, where to find them, and how to keep those networks going. Here are a few content and conversation prompts you can use to display your ruler personality...
Reward your excellence and your achievements
Display how well your clients are doing with you
Motivational messages to strive for the top spot
Explain how you provide structure to the world
Tip. You want your brand to be perceived as high class. Focus on your commitment to your audience, your cause, your brand, your products, and your everything. Be open to changing the steps to get to your final goal, but don’t change the goal itself, and never forget to place your clients on the same level as you!
You can display your ruler archetype through two main strategies...
Exert leadership
Demonstrate superiority
The ruler voice
Voice is a unique and distinctive element of your brand’s communication with customers. It remains consistent throughout all the content that you create. A brand voice is often characterized by both what it is and what it isn’t.
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.
Here are some examples of ruler voices...
Authoritative, but not assertive
Confident, but not egoistical
Commanding, but not dominating
Refined, but not subtle
The ruler 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 ruler weaknesses
The things that you should be most worried about as a ruler brand are being too authoritarian and being unable to delegate. Make sure to spread the work out so you are not torn all over the place and end up losing your authority. Be careful to stay far from chaos or being overthrown
The five things you should avoid in your brand are...
Showing any weakness (see tip below)
Being seen as insignificant
Failure
Poverty
Destitution
Tip. Show you are human by sharing your weaknesses as a human, but make sure it does not undermine your authority.
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 ruler 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.
Ruler 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. Taking responsibility for one’s own life.
Level two. Being the leader of a family or group.
Level three. Becoming a leader at a higher level within the community.
Ruler sub-archetypes
There are five related sub-archetypes within the ruler 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.
Ruler
Rulers possess a high degree of confidence and a desire to be leaders. They need to be in control and feel qualified based on proven expertise or competence. Rulers strive to create environments that are productive and harmonious. Their weakness lies in the fear of losing control and can therefore overcompensate by becoming too authoritarian.
Sovereign
The sovereign carries an air of prestige and rank. The sovereign always appears controlled and proper. While the sovereign can fall into the trap of entitlement, it carries a great deal of responsibility and strives to act accordingly, which can also result in burning out or losing control, which starts a cycle of corrections and small mistakes, making them lose power.
Judge
The judge uses discernment and wisdom to challenge wrongs that need to be righted, thus providing structure. With a balance between compassion and justice, the judge is strong on communication, research, and strategy. However, it can be seduced by power, so judges should make a conscious effort to remain objective and impartial.
Ambassador
Acting as a diplomat, the ambassador works to resolve disputes and conflicts. The ambassadors strategically maneuver complex issues or relationships to restore stability on common ground, while remaining as the neutral party so they are still looked up to by all sides. The challenge here lies in the potential to misuse their influence.
Patriarch
The patriarch (or monarch) acts as head of the family or community, maintains order, and provides protection. With leadership and courage, monarchs take care of those under them, inspiring feelings of safety and security. However, monarchs should be careful not to ignore their audience and fall into a tyrannical leadership style.