The Healer Archetype: Brand personas for health care providers

In developing Brand Strategies for our clients, we rely on personality archetypes to help identity and amplify the core characteristics of both businesses and their audiences. Archetypes reside in the universal wellspring of consciousness, allowing us to draw upon timeless patterns and personalities. With just a few subtle hints and signals, we’re able to paint a complete picture of them in our minds. We recognize these characters, we understand their emotional drives, and we know what to expect from them.

Because most of our clients are chiropractors or other natural healthcare providers, it’s impossible to develop their Brand Personas without considering the Healer archetype. The Healer embodies empathy and compassion, always acting with patience and listening closely. These are natural and necessary traits for any healthcare professional, and their brands must convey them. In order to stand out among the competition, however, we will usually emphasize another archetype, one that helps practitioners differentiate themselves, while maintaining the essential Healer qualities in the background.

The Healer: A special breed of caregiver

Who is the Healer?

Caroline Myss, herself a specialist in archetypes, is considered a quintessential Healer. Like other Caregivers, she behaves passionately, with a selfless commitment to restoring the health and wellbeing of others. The Healer speaks in a tone of empathy, warmth and reassurance. More than that, she recognizes the vital connection between mind, body and spirit, understanding that one aspect can’t be healed unless all are healed. This figure sends a message that will resonate with those who have suffered any kind of loss, who long for wholeness, and who have a deep fear of conflict or neglect.

In archetypal circles, we like to say there are just different types. In fact, Carl Jung, who brought archetypes into popular culture, acknowledged an infinite number of archetypes. But for branding purposes, most authors and experts identify 12 primary archetypes. And for each of these 12 personas, we recognize 4 additional subtypes. The Healer is a special kind of Caregiver, alongside the Angel, the Guardian, and the Samaritan.

Brands who provide an altruistic service, promising mental and physical wellbeing, helping those on the road to recovery, will naturally reflect the Healer archetype. An inspirational vision enables the Healer to heal wounds of all kinds, physical, emotional and even cultural.

Archetypes are about the simplification of personalities, distilling them down to their essential qualities. The core strengths and traits of the Healer archetype include empathy, faith, health, inspiration, restoration and wholeness. Some of the best example of Healers areAlbert Schweitzer, E.T., and Jesus. Alcoholics Anonymous embodies the Healer archetype with perfection.

Archetypes and Branding

How do archetypes help with branding?

The key goal in Brand Strategy is to create a personality around your business. Rather than coming across as just another commercial entity, this empowers businesses to present themselves as human and relatable. In order to create a personality that is immediately recognizable, we employ the same technique that storytellers, novelists and filmmakers have used for centuries: archetypes.

As soon as one of these classic, universal characters steps into the scene, the audience — whether consciously or unconsciously — will know them for who they are. Of course, nowadays you have literature and cinema bringing in all kinds of irony and moral ambiguity, so focus instead on fairy tales, children’s stories, and timeless classics. Think about the cast of Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz, or Gilligan’s Island.

As a literary critic, you might argue that these characters lack depth and nuance. But when it comes to branding, you don’t want nuance, you want clarity and consistency. In this line of work, predictability is a virtue not a flaw.

The art and science of branding

Branding is not about mystery, it’s about letting your audience know just who you are, what you do, and what you stand for. So your role and these features should be clear from the beginning, and reinforced through each and every encounter. An effective brand lets the audience know what to expect, and then delivers on those expectations, memorably and consistently.

At the same time, that doesn’t mean there’s no room for subtlety. It doesn’t require you to be obvious in all your imagery and communications. For example, not every chiropractor needs a stack of vertebrae in their logo. You don’t even necessarily need the word chiropractor in the name of your clinic. If you are clear and consistent in your messaging, they will know you’re a chiropractor. And they will know that you’re more than just a back doctor.

Keep in mind, archetypes live in the subconscious mind. Likewise, most decisions, even decisions about out healthcare, as especially decisions about how we spend money, happen subconsciously. So subtle, subconscious cues can be very powerful. But first you have to understand the anatomy of archetypes and the psychology of your audience.

Chiropractors as Healer archetypes

Every healthcare practitioner needs to be aware of the Healer archetype, because it’s precisely what the patient is looking for. The Healer addresses and satisfies those emotional needs, even when those needs remain in the subconscious. Therefore, a chiropractor has to reflect those qualities.

The Healer or Caregiver is what we call the native archetype of this industry or profession. These are essential characteristics for any effective care provider. Especially well-suited for the chiropractors, a Healer is said not to do the healing, but to create the conditions where healing can happen on its own. Similarly, the chiropractic philosophy rests in the belief, or faith, that abundant health is the natural state, and that the body knows how to achieve that state when given the opportunity and the support.

So in terms of Brand Persona, and in order to differentiate, most chiropractors should look to another archetype as their primary identifier. While always maintaining the Healer in the background, or as a foundation, chiropractors can distinguish themselves as Sages, determined to seek and offer wisdom, or as Heroes, willing to go the extra mile and make personal sacrifices for the benefit of society.

We’ll look into these and other archetypes in other blog posts.

Mixing archetypes

If you’re in the healthcare field and you want to embody the Healer archetype, then you really have to step it up a notch. There needs to be something unique about your practice and the way you do business. You need to display exceptional healing properties. Otherwise, you’ll just be another healer with a lower case H.

In a community filled with doctors and therapists who identify as Healers, you need to consider a different strategy, or else risk getting lost in the noise.

Most Brand Personas end up being a blend of two different archetypes, with one of them slightly more dominant. It’s common and effective to have a differentiating archetype as your primary identifier and the native archetype (a Healer of Caregiver in the case of a chiropractor) in the supporting position.

At most, you might combine two other archetypes and keep the native archetype as the third. But that’s pushing the limit. Remember, the idea of archetypes is to make your brand recognizable, familiar, and memorable.

Somehow, the human psyche is conditioned to recognize archetypes. So people already know how to think about you (or your brand) if you align with a specific archetype. When you blend too many archetypes, you end up with something more idiosyncratic, like a real person, which takes much longer for audiences to process. In real life, we might cherish those oddities and nuances, but in marketing, we need instant connections, familiar sensations, and clear expectations.

Onward and Upward with your brand

Develop your persona and learn how to grow your business or practice with brand archetypes and winning Brand Strategy. Be sure to check out some of our other articles and services.

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