THE INNOCENT

Free to be you and me

The Innocent seeks happiness, harmony, and simplicity among a complex world. They are optimists who are inspired by the idea of a Utopia in which they are free of corruption and animosity. They try to see the best in everything, but which can also mean that they have a tendency to disregard reality.

This archetype is also called the Angel, Child, Dreamer, Idealist, Muse, Mystic, Naive, Optimist, Pollyanna, Puer or Puella, Purist, Romantic, Saint, Traditionalist, or Utopian.

The 12 Brand Archetypes were developed and articulated in "The Hero and The Outlaw" by Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson

The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes Hardcover - (Amazon Affiliate Link)

INNOCENT MARKETING OPPORTUNITY

The Innocent archetype provides a good identity for brands that:

  • Provide a relatively simple answer to an identifiable problem

  • Are associated with goodness, morality, simplicity, nostalgia, or childhood

  • Have functions associated with cleanliness, health, or virtue—and that are infinitely replicable

  • Are priced moderate to low

  • Are produced by a company with straight-arrow core values

  • Desire to differentiate from a product with a tarnished image


MARKETING APPROACH | Portraying a sense of nostalgia allowing them to connect with others and be characterized as trustworthy and reliable

TONE | Genuine, Honest, Hopeful, Joyful, Loving, Nostalgic, Optimistic, Peaceful, Reliable, Safe, Simple, Trustworthy, Unpretentious, Virtuous, and Wholesome

VALUE PROPOSITION | Helps people retain or renew faith

CUSTOMER FEAR | Entrapment, selling out, emptiness

 

INNOCENT MINDSET & TRAITS

GOAL | To live in a paradise full of happiness, optimism, and simplicity

STRATEGY | To lead by example by always trying to do what is right

MOTIVATION | Independence & Fulfillment

CALL | A desire for purity, goodness, and simplicity

CORE DESIRE | To experience paradise

GIFT | Faith and optimism

CHAMPIONS | Faith, Fulfillment, Hope, Optimism, Purity, Safety, Simplicity, Trust, and Virtue

SUPER POWERS | Offering simple solutions to complex problems by having a uniquely optimistic outlook on life and a desire to find the good in everything and everyone.

SHADOW | Denial, repression

TRAP | A childlike personality may be misinterpreted as naïve, dependent, and mundane; whereas their optimism may be viewed as ignorance seeing how it’s not always the most realistic perspective

FEARS | Doing something wrong and being punished or abandoned by others for doing so

TURN-OFFS | Complexity, Deceit, Guilt, Pessimism, and Stress

 

LEVELS OF THE INNOCENT

LEVEL 1 Childlike simplicity, naive, dependent, obedient, trusting, idyllic

LEVEL 2 Renewal, positive, reinventing, reframing, cleansing, reentering the Promise Land

LEVEL 3 An almost mystical sense of oneness, whereby Innocence comes from values and integrity, not outer experience; being, not doing

 

SIMILAR BRAND ARCHETYPES


SOURCES

Mark, Margaret, Pearson, Carol, (2001). The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes Hardcover - (Amazon Affiliate Link) pages 13, 18, 53-55, 70

The authors developed the 12 Brand Archetypes as a tool for marketing in 1995 and explained their methodology and ideas in their seminal book. Some of the content on this page are ideas cited directly to maintain correctness and some have been paraphrased where possible.