Research On The Brand Mythology Prototype Theory In Chinese Brands

A brand is a huge warehouse, which is not only a storage of the functional characteristics of a products, but also a storage of the meaning and value of the brand. Archetypes intention has always been used in a variety of brands to promote their products, and it almost become a necessity. If a brand has an archetypes image, then it can directly communicate with consumer’s heart, evoke consumer’s recognition and acceptance of the brand, and deepen the meaning of the brand to consumers.In nowadays, the homogenization of product’s function is a common phenomenon, but some brands which already have a general and powerful symbolic meaning can stay in a high standard of price. These powerful symbolic meaning is come from the archetypes by which these long-lasting modes show its power in modern society. However, there are many unsuccessful examples that also use the archetypes in there promotion. Planners and creators sometimes are unable to aware of the function of the archetypes in their ad, or ignore the law that archetypes must be coordinated with a particular culture. So we urgently need a set of archetypes’ selection and management science that fit for Chinese culture.In "The Hero and the Outlaw", Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson, according to the theory of motivation, established a complete set of meaning management system, which can find the right type of archetypes and the right story in a systematic and scientific way. There are12kinds of archetypes:Innocent, Explorer, The Sage, Hero, The Rebel, Magician, Mortal, Lover, Rigoletto, Caregivers, Creator, and Ruler. According to the meaning management system, author find out some ads that use the12kinds of myth archetypes in China.However, considering the differences in history and culture, when we use archetypes to define Chinese brand, we can’t copy the archetypes and patterns from Western history. There is a big difference of unconscious between Western audience and Chinese audience. Simply copy a archetypes model of the West in China will produce a lot of jokes, cause a lot of errors. So the author uses the2011China500 Most Valuable Brands for the study.12archetypical brands in Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson’s book " The Hero and the Outlaw " as model to analyze China’s brands, as well as the problems in the Chinese brand building.During my classifying analyzing and discovering, I found Chinese brand prototype image positioning is not clear, some brand blindly only to emphasize their products’quality, does not pay attention to the prototype image orientation, has no clear personality; some brands only have advertisements and slogans reflected its prototype image, but not with the support of marketing and a series of related to support this image; some brand archetype in the same period are not uniform, have multiple prototype image.The author thinks, the position of the brand image can not only for the flash, we must to bring the myth prototype theory into China, and be in China, then, to establish a set of suitable for the Chinese meaning of management system, to service for the Chinese brand image.