The Jester Personality Key Characteristics

The Jester is driven by the core desire for:

LAUGHTER

The Jester is constantly searching for or displaying

Fun

Happiness

Enjoyment

Positivity

While they’re constantly running from and fear

Gloom

Boredom

Sadness

Loneliness

Brand Archetypes Cheatsheet

[ Brand Personality Like A PRO ]

The Jester Archetype Brand Strategy

If your brand exists to entertain your audience through humour, the Jester is an obvious choice for your brand personality.

With that said, you don’t need to be in the business of making people laugh for your brand to benefit from the human emotions laughter evokes.

The strategic association made with The Jester Characteristics are that of:

“Enjoyment”.

Here are some hilarious examples of brands taking to the mic on social media.

The strategic association made with The Jester Characteristics are that of:

“Enjoyment”.

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When To Use The Jester Archetype

Whether directly or indirectly, if you want your audience to associate your brand with the feeling or experience of enjoyment then the Jester characteristics can play an effective role in making that connection.

Typical Jester Industries

There are many brands in the business of entertainment or humour, though making money from the laughter of your audience, is not a necessity to adopt the Jester Archetype.

From men’s care to confectionery to alcohol, brands that have a hand in the experience of “enjoyment” can leverage their sense of humour and associate their brand with good times.

Typical Jester industries include:

Entertainment

Men’s Care

Alcohol

Confectionery

Play / Impulse Products

Is My Brand A Jester Brand?

If you’re considering using the Jester brand archetype personality to resonate with your audience, then the following questions will guide your decision:

Is our solution associated with happy / fun times?

Is our brand used at any stage during or on the journey to enjoyment?

Will our audience embrace light-hearted messaging?

Do the Jester characteristics align with our position we want to own in the mind of our audience?

Is there a common enemy we can poke fun at?

If you answered yes to all or most of these questions, then the Jester characteristics may be a good fit for your brand personality.

The Audience Of The Jester Brand

Brand archetypes are used as a foundation to develop a brand personality to resonate with your audience on a human level.

The key player here is your audience, understanding who they are, how they feel and what they want.

The audience of the Jester should display an attraction towards these characteristics:

Fun-Loving

Light-hearted

Playful

Cheerful

Festive

Your audience appreciates a break from monotony and a sprinkle of laughter in their day.

Although they may have serious jobs, they aren’t attracted to that seriousness and often go in search of an escape from it.

Jester brands resonate with their audience most effectively when they display language and terminology that aligns with their sense of humour.

Jester Brand Archetype Examples

Brands that make you laugh through their advertisements, imagery, website copy and social posts, likely have an element of the Jester archetype in their personality.

Here are some of the household brand names:

Dollar Shave Club

Dollar Shave Club is an example of a brand who used the Jester Archetype characteristics to differentiate themselves from the market leader Gillette.

They connected with their audience by pointing to the high-price and unnecessary features of the industry king Gillette, with a refreshing dose of wit, dry humour and “I don’t give a sh*t” attitude.

Their hilarious inaugural Youtube video was watched by 3 million people in a matter of days and put them on the map.

5 years later they were sold to Unilever for 1 Billion dollars, and today continue to use the much-loved Jester archetype characteristics to connect with their audience.

M&M’s

M&M’s, America’s most loved candy, hit a plateau in the early 90’s having been a favourite since the war.

Advertising agency BBDO were brought in shake things up and came up with simple characters based on the colours of the candy, each with their own humorous characteristics, making their debut at the Super Bowl.

Today, M&M’s characters continue to use humour to be a ray of sunshine in the audiences day and have kept the brand at the top of their category.

Old Spice

Another brand with a long history, Old Spice had been around since 1937.

In the 90’s it became known as a middle of the road, middle-aged, middle-class brand that was in need of a change in direction.

Old spice changed direction through their personality.

They kept their original masculine characteristics but added a good dose of humour and began appealing to younger generations.

By 2004 they were back in pole position with 20% of the billion dollar market, and their 2010 campaign “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign has gone down as a master class in advertising comedy.

How To Express Jester Characteristics

When it comes to brand personality and leveraging archetypes it’s all about displaying the right characteristics.

The ways to express characteristics are endless but here are a few examples of how the Jester Archetype Characteristics can be displayed:

Poke fun at a shared enemy

Use sarcasm in your copy

Use a comedic image style

Sprinkle humour into your video content

Create a comical character

Challenge a competitor with comedy

Highlight laughable problems in the industry

Over To You

To connect with your audience on a human level requires brand personality.

Using archetypes as the foundation for that personality allows you to effectively match attractions to characteristics and audiences attracted to humour will love the Jester personality.

Are you developing a brand personality and trying to figure out how to best appeal to your audience?

Does the Jester suit your audience and do you have any challenges developing a personality for your brand?

I’d love to hear from you! Leave a note in to comments below.