edge alignment retail communications © 2011 Two West, Inc. Copyright holder is licensing this under the Creative Commons License http://creativecommons.org. Please feel free to post this on your blog or email it to whomever you believe would benefit from reading it. edge alignment retail communications Table of Contents 2 Introduction 4 10 How Do The Twelve Archetypes Work? Retail Archetypes 6 35 Where Do Retail Retail Archetypes Archetypes Come From? Create Place 8 36 The Four Actualizing Structural Elements Archetypes Introduction Customers can get khaki pants or shampoo or furniture anywhere. Even from home. In an arena where every product cannot be a standout, the retail environment itself must provide a compelling reason to visit and buy. It isn’t enough to make the store look inviting and to reflect the brand standards of the company. Retailers have to think about their space as a destination, a stage for the shopping story in which customers see themselves as the star. Using studies drawn from the experiences of Nordstrom, Tiffany & Co., Cabela’s and other retail powerhouses, the authors show that the most successful brands are those that most effectively tap into fundamental patterns in the unconscious mind. These patterns fall into 12 basic categories or archetypes. 2 This guide will help retailers identify and understand the most successful retail archetypes and serve as a decision tool to help them balance corporate strategy with the subconscious needs of their customers. For retailers who use this system, the outcome will be a consistently more engaging, more powerful brand experience. 3 How Do Archetypes Work? Clearly, investing in the right location with the right amount of space and the right demographic mix for your target audience is important. But to be successful in today’s competitive landscape, you need to talk to not just the conscious but also the subconscious. Once upon a time… We’re exposed to stories at a very young age. You probably remember being read to by a parent or teacher. Stories provide a rich reserve of common knowledge from which to draw to help us make sense of our world. There are certain basic characters and story lines that regularly appear in myth, fairy tale, literature and film. First advanced by Carl Jung early in the 20th century, these common characters, known as archetypes, represent core aspects of the human condition, capable of channeling universal experiences and emotions. From the Hero to The Sage to The Devil, we know what to expect from and how to feel about these characters. Consider Harry Potter (The Hero), Dumbledore (The Sage) and Voldemort (The Devil) from The Harry Potter series. Even if you were to start reading or watching in the middle, you’d immediately feel familiar with the characters, even though how they act out their story is new and exciting. 4 This pattern goes beyond characters in narrative and myth. It can be applied to retail spaces as well. After all, from the castle to the garden, archetypal characters have to have a familiar place to act out their familiar stories. Because shopping is not a passive act, archetypal settings allow shoppers to become characters and make the shopping experience part of the shopper’s story line. Archetypal settings draw people in exactly because they are a balance between what is known and comfortable and what is new and exciting. When your customers determine where they want to do business, do they look at your environment and see the setting for their retail “story?” If you want to establish real loyalty in an age when procuring goods is simply a matter of an internet connection and a visit from UPS, you have to speak to deeper needs and symbols. Retail archetypes give shopping emotional context and shoppers a clearer sense of purpose. They give shoppers permission to assume a role – from a knight shopping for a ring to an explorer shopping for bargains – in a play on a stage that happens to be a store. 5 Where Do Retail Archetypes Come From? Methods for retail space design come in a wide variety, atmospherics being the leader. The basic principle behind atmospherics is that pleasant environments result in an approach response and unpleasant environments result in avoidance. Simple. Too simple. That’s because, as we’ve mentioned, shopping has evolved beyond the mere procurement of goods. And retail spaces have evolved beyond the transaction. They are now places of entertainment, places to construct the notion of family and friends, even places to teach social values. The archetype model expands on atmospherics, combining and evolving the principles of psychology and anthropology, including dramaturgy, proxemics and habitat theory, to give people “reasons” for choosing one shopping venue over another. DRAMATURGY Anthropologist Erving Goffman used the imagery of the theater to portray the importance of social action. If you understand the roles being assumed by the shopper, your retail space can be used as a stage to help them live out the desired role. PROXEMICS The term proxemics, introduced by anthropologist Edward T. Hall in 1966, encompasses how people culturally develop motion around and assign meaning to spaces, transforming it from space to “place,” complete with a sense of personal investment in the environment. 6