Please tell us why S.A. Brands Are Using Boring Female Archetypes…

Stuck on the Caregiver

Sarah Britten, Strategic Director at LabStore S.A., says that if you look at the underlying archetypes [in advertising communications] we still see the same female archetypes ‘absolutely dominating’.

“However, we’ve seen some high profile campaigns that have been praised for their interesting depiction of women and girls, such as the Run Like a Girl campaign, or the Dove Real Beauty campaign.”





“I work in the shopper marketing space, and we get lots of shopper marketing briefs – and virtually all of them are addressed to the mom, the archetype of the Caregiver,” explains Britten. “She typically is the person who does the household shopping, and we don’t have the luxury of being able to produce targeted, segmented communication that targets people who are not typical household shoppers.”

She adds that it also depends on the type of category you’re advertising to.

“With FMCG, you’re talking to household shoppers, usually a mom. So you’ll see the Caregiver coming through in a lot of advertising,” she says. “They might change the way she is depicted- so in the 1950’s she would have been a housewife, while today she’s as likely to be coming home from her office job…but that archetype – the Caregiver – is still the same.”

Celebrating the Orphan

“What Dove has done interestingly is to celebrate the so-called archetype of Orphan, which in Jungian archetypes would be your ordinary or everyday person,” says Britten. “With their Real Beauty campaign they took ordinary women who were not necessarily occupying a particular archetype…and they confronted them with their own perceptions of themselves. I thought that was a really interesting use of that particular archetype.”

According to Britten, we’re also seeing more and more use of the Warrior archetype.

“In the past you would have seldom seen this,” she says. “It was reserved almost always for men, and male athletes, but now if you look at the Under Armour campaign that they’ve done with Misty Copeland, the ballerina, it’s a very interesting use of that archetype because they’re taking a woman who’s very famous for her athletic prowess (in a very feminine way) – but she’s photographed to highlight the contours of her muscles. She poses in a very strong and visually impactful way. So the Warrior archetype is definitely coming through more…”

In her view, local brands are ‘a little bit behind the times.’ She highlights one archetype that has been popular locally of late – the Jester - which Suzelle DIY exemplifies.

“But if I think of the Warrior archetype, we’re not seeing a lot of that in local advertising and that’s possibly because we don’t have the budget that international brands do…and we don’t have the kinds of briefs that would give us the freedom to do that,” she adds. “So you see a lot more of the Orphan archetype or the Jester archetype because YouTube lends itself to that. People share stuff that they either can relate to/find emotionally engaging, or that is entertaining and funny.”