Personal Brand Archetypes

Brand archetype

The Innocent

Brands with an ‘Innocent’ archetype are honest, optimistic and pure, driven by the quest for happiness. They love simplicity, are not interested in publicity stunts and believe in letting customers explore their business for themselves. Companies with this archetype are likely to reject guilt-inducing advertising.

  • Optimistic
  • Charming
  • Honest
  • Loyal
  • Simplistic
Promise
To create simplicity and clarity
Goal
to achieve contentment.
Strategy
To do things "right".
Weakness
Innocents can come across as old fashioned, prudish or naive.

How the Innocent 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 Innocent, the register to aim for is:

  • simple
  • upbeat
  • lighthearted
  • optimistic
  • cheerful
  • humble
  • pure

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 Innocent 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:

  • Depravity
  • Deceit
  • Complexity
  • Punishment
  • Confusion

The blind spot: Innocents can come across as old fashioned, prudish or naive. 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 Innocent palette leans towards pastels like mint green, light blue, and all shades of pink.

#FFFFFF
#FBF5F2
#F0E4E3
#DEDEDE
#D8E3DF
#E2DEAC

Type direction

Typefaces for the Innocent should feel clean, simple, and uncluttered.

The Innocent characters you already know

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

Buddy the Elf

Buddy the Elf is sincere, optimistic, and goes through life cheerfully changing people’s lives for the better, without ever really losing the charm of his innocence through the trials.

Pippin Took - The Hobbit

Pippin Took, is portrayed in both the books and films as an innocent, free-loving, and slightly devious Naive completely unequipped to deal with the dangers he is thrust to in the effort to help his friend. It is Pippin’s innocence that allows him to befriend the Ents, the King of Gondor, and reveal the true intentions of Sauromon.

Snow White

Snow White is anexample of the dangers of innocence. She is so oblivious in her ideals that she is never wary of strangers, or the queen that is out to destroy her. While her affinity with animals and kindness to the dwarves earns her happiness, she is ultimately a victim of her own character, refusing to even see any bad in the world.

Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump

Mr. Rogers

Michael J. Fox in Back to The Future

Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz

Is the Innocent 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