Personal Brand Archetypes

Brand archetype

The Ruler

Motivated by the desire for power and control, Ruler brands are naturally dominating. Ruler archetypes pride their selves on being the chief among the tribe, representing the highest of standards. A Ruler brand aspires to rule a specific niche and suggests to its rulers that they can be a ruler too.

  • Power
  • Status
  • Success
  • Wealth
  • Loyalty
Promise
To bring order to chaos through power
Goal
to bring order to chaos
Strategy
to express a systematic expression of power to achieve an end goal
Weakness
Rulers can be seen as stodgy, out of date or unyielding, and need to innovate occasionally with their products or methods.

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

  • noble
  • sophisticated
  • elite
  • highly structured
  • prestigious
  • confident
  • refined
  • affluent

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 Ruler 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:

  • Losing Power
  • Being Undermined
  • Rule breakers
  • Rebels

The blind spot: Rulers can be seen as stodgy, out of date or unyielding, and need to innovate occasionally with their products or methods. 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 Ruler palette leans towards Strong primary colors and regal purples

#458886
#6A2862
#37213D
#2D1323
#A2863C
#929847

Type direction

Typefaces for the Ruler should feel authoritative, commanding, and bold.

The Ruler characters you already know

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

Tony Soprano

Darth Vadar

Mufasa of The Lion King

Mary Streep as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wear's Prada

The Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland

Is the Ruler 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