The Sage - 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.
Sage brands focus on finding the perfect solution and the exact wording of the truth without any ambiguity. Your brand’s main talents are wisdom and intelligence, which are gathered through your high value on finding the truth and gathering knowledge. Your brand’s voice is knowledgeable, assured, and guiding and your brand's strongest motivations are independence and fulfillment through understanding.
Before you get deeper into the sage archetype, there are some questions I want you to think about and link your answers back to your brand strategy...
What does the word understanding 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 sage?
As the proud owner of a brand with a sage 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 understanding
Understanding is what is most important to all sage personality types. Have you put any importance on that word or the meaning behind it?
Note. Keep in mind that understanding can be understood in many different ways. It can be the want to be understood, the want to understand others, or a collective want to understand the universe and share knowledge as a whole.
Whatever your definition or reason behind it, look deeper into yourself and your brand and pull that innovation out.
Important! Understanding does not necessarily mean science and facts! It can be a more spiritual or intimate sense of providing understanding.
The reason you come up with, this is what you want to talk about with your audience and provide to them.
Understanding
The Sage 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 sage personality drives and your own brand values.
Intelligent
Informative
Expert
Influential
Thoughtful
Important! These are the drives behind sage 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 sage archetype, your goal would be to use intelligence to understand the world. Your brand can do this through the gift of...
Wisdom
Also, the sage archetype believes the path to happiness is paved with knowledge and that by seeking out the truth and sharing it with others, we can make the world a better place. Their core desire is to discover the truth.
The sage 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 sage brands and compare it with your own brand purpose.
Use intelligence and analysis to understand the world.
You can do this by seeing out information and knowledge, self-reflection, and understanding the processes. Your strongest strategy to do is to seek out information so you can understand and teach processes.
The Sage 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 sage brands...
TED
Google
BBC
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 sage
As a sage 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 sage personality forward, as a brand that is informative and knowledgeable...
Use knowledgeable and guiding language.
Focus on truth and knowledge as your priorities.
Provide expertise or information to others.
Lead your audience on the path of wisdom.
Celebrate life-long learning and goals.
Show your skepticism openly.
Be objective and as unbiased as possible.
Never stop searching for the right answer.
Try your best not to sound like a know-it-all.
Confirm your conclusions before sharing them.
Connect with
Since the main goal of the sage is to use intelligence to understand the world, this brand 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
Explorer. Challenge, journey, unknown, change, exploration
Outlaw. Revolution, change, challenge, encouraging, empowering
Magician. Transformation, opportunity, fantasy, knowledge, mystery
Hero. Empowerment, inspiration, opportunity, worth, recognition
Ruler. Power, control, respect, superiority, exclusiveness
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 sage personality...
Education is the path to wisdom and wisdom is where the answers lie
Nobody knows everything
Intelligence is asking the right questions
Explain your yearning for paradise and perfection
Tip. The search and gathering of knowledge and information, especially with so many resources available, can be daunting and go on forever. There are some sages that keep searching for one answer their entire lives. Don't let your brand be that way, if you're not going to share the process. Even if you don't have all the information, share it and let your audience give their opinion… maybe they'll know the answer.
You can display your sage archetype through two main strategies...
Show the path to wisdom
Celebrate life-long learning
The Sage 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 sage voices...
Knowledgeable, but not scholarly
Assured, but not definite
Guiding, but not coddling
Perceptive, but not discreet
The Sage 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 Sage weaknesses
The things you should be most worried about as a sage brand is being lied to or misled. Make sure to double-check all of your information before sharing it, but be careful from spending too much time focusing on the details and never acting. Be careful of being duped or showing any ignorance.
The five things you should avoid in your brand are...
Ignorance
Insanity
Powerlessness
Deliberate misinformation
Inaccuracy
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 sage 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.
Sage 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. Conducting a search for the truth by looking to experts.
Level two. Aiming to become an expert through critical thinking and analysis.
Level three. Achieving expert status through wisdom and confidence in one’s area of expertise.
Sage sub-archetypes
There are five related sub-archetypes within the sage 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.
Sage
Motivated by a desire to seek the truth, the sage values knowledge and learning. With an independent streak a mile wide and a healthy dose of skepticism, sages prefer to make rational decisions based on research. Unfortunately, this can lead to arrogance or a “know-it-all” attitude with an accompanying air of righteousness.
Mentor
The mentor’s existence is devoted to sharing wisdom for the benefit of others. Mentors have the ability to remain objective and are good judges of character. Everything they do is based on a desire to make sure the right outcomes are reached. This, however, can turn their helping hand into an iron fist, depending on how they dispense information.
Detective
The detective searches to uncover what is hidden. They possess a fondness for puzzles and have a keen eye for empirical evidence, but are also intuitive and rely on instinct. Even if detectives don't want to admit it, the search for the truth can be a selfish pursuit rather than for the benefit of others and this can turn into snooping over information gathering.
Shaman
The Shaman is very spiritual in nature, with a mystical power to see and tell the truth. Shamans focus on a higher consciousness or alternative perspective. Unfortunately, this can lead to them developing a false sense of power and exerting it over others through fake information, false claims, and manipulation, rather than factual information and statistics.
Translator
The translator is a communicator that can tap into universal truths by interpreting their meaning and connecting patterns. Translators are intelligent messengers, who are attracted to communication and language. Translators have to be careful before sharing those truths with the world, without having the facts to back them up.