Personal Brand Archetypes

Brand archetype

The Everyman

The Everyman brand archetype expresses traits of simplicity and unpretentiousness. Companies falling into this category tend to connect with people on a deeper level and don’t expect to be outlandish or outstanding.

  • Dependable
  • Realistic
  • Pragmatic
  • Inclusive
  • Equality
Promise
To bring fair value
Goal
to show empathy
Strategy
to be the best for a fair price
Weakness
Quite vulnerable to competition, can be hard to differentiate from competitors, in constant danger of becoming irrelevant.

How the Everyman sounds

Tone of voice is the most immediately useful part of an archetype, because you apply it every time you write anything at all. For the Everyman, the register to aim for is:

  • genuine
  • likable
  • good natured humor
  • down to earth
  • welcoming
  • wholesome
  • friendly
  • humble
  • practical

Write a post, then read it back against that list. If it does not sound like those words it will not sound like you either — and that gap is exactly the friction that makes publishing feel like work.

What the Everyman fears

Every archetype is defined as much by what it avoids as by what it wants. These are the things this one instinctively moves away from:

  • Exclusion
  • Standing out
  • Hostility
  • Isolation
  • Separation

The blind spot: Quite vulnerable to competition, can be hard to differentiate from competitors, in constant danger of becoming irrelevant. Naming it is what stops it running the show — an archetype used well leans on its strengths and plans around this one.

Colour direction

The Everyman palette leans towards basic and simple light blues and greens.

#221A10
#4E7BA8
#9AAEB9
#BEC4AA
#D7E1A9
#E6F799

Type direction

Typefaces for the Everyman should feel straight forward and basic such as Arial.

The Everyman characters you already know

Recognisable examples of the pattern, described rather than pictured — these are other people's characters.

Ron Weasley from Harry Potter

Peter Parker in Spiderman (out of costume)

Homer Simpson

Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit

Is the Everyman actually you?

Reading an archetype and recognising yourself in it are different things. The test scores you against all twelve and shows you the whole spread, not just the winner.

Discover Your Archetype

The other eleven