Brand Archetypes: Straightjacket or Springboard for CX?
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Release Date: 09/20/2025
Most People Think They Use AI Well; Many Are Mistaken! Are You?
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
How are you really using AI â and how does that compare to others? In this episode, Colin Shaw introduces a simple behavioural framework for understanding how people are actually using AI today â not in theory, but in practice â and why this matters enormously for the future of Customer Experience. Rather than treating AI as a technology maturity model, Colin reframes it as a behavioural curve, shaped by confidence, trust, intent, and the consequences of being wrong. Drawing on real usage examples, ChatGPT analytics, and current research, Colin outlines four AI usage patterns that people...
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Uncomfortable Truth: The Focus on Customer Experience Hasnât Paid Off, Why?
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Customer satisfaction has barely moved in over 30 years â despite enormous investment in Customer Experience. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, Professor Ryan Hamilton and Morgan Ward speak with Forrest Morgeson from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). ACSI has tracked customer satisfaction continuously since 1994 using the same questions and methodology across the entire US economy. And the long-term data tells a story that challenges many comfortable CX assumptions. Rather than steadily improving as CX practices mature, customer satisfaction rises and falls in cycles...
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The Rise of Synthetic Audiences: Fast, Cheap⌠but Believable?
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, Professor Ryan Hamilton is joined by Ben Shaw, seasoned brand strategist, to unpack the promises and pitfalls of synthetic audiences - AI-driven research used for faster, cheaper market research. Synthetic audiences, powered by large language models (LLMs), can replicate customer segments and respond to creative concepts or product questions at scale cutting the time and cost of traditional surveys. But does it come with trade-offs? Expect lively debate on the AI vs. LLM naming debate, the enduring value of ethnography and nuance, and practical...
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Are Your Salespeople Sabotaging Your Customer Experience?
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Sales and Customer Experienceâtwo critical functions that should work together, but too often operate at odds. This week, Colin and Ryan explore how traditional sales tactics can undermine long-term loyalty and create organisational silos. They share personal stories (including Colinâs car-buying nightmare) and practical advice for aligning sales with your desired customer experience. If you want to sell AND build trust, this episode is for you. Best Quote of the Episode: "If you canât proudly stand behind the experience youâre creating, youâve got a problem." â Colin Shaw Key...
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The New Currency of Customer Experience: 'People Like Me'
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Trust in traditional institutions is eroding. As customers lose faith in advertising, government and even online reviews, theyâre turning to voices that feel most relatable: peers and communities. Edelmanâs latest Trust Barometer shows the most credible spokesperson for a company is now âpeople like me.â Ben Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton explore the decline of influencer credibility, the rise of community-driven word-of-mouth, the tension between authenticity and control, and why attention + trust will be the âcoins of the realmâ for brands in the decade ahead. đ Key...
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Good Friction, Bad Friction: Why a Little Effort Makes Customers Care
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Episode Overview When everything is one-click easy, do we lose something meaningful? Guest host Dr. Morgan Ward joins Dr. Ryan Hamilton to explore how the right amount of friction in the consumption experience can boost connection, meaning, and long-term use of the productâwhile the wrong kind just gets in the way. Quote of the Episode âConsumption, in some ways, has just gotten too easy.â â Dr. Morgan Ward đ Key Takeaways Easier isnât always better. Ultra-frictionless buying can strip away the identity, discovery, and accomplishment that make buying feel meaningful....
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I Signed a âGag Orderâ. Hereâs What It Taught Me About Organizations
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
In this episode, Colin Shaw shares a recent personal experience with a major brand that imposed a 'gag order' (NDA) after a poor service experience â and how this reflects a deeper organizational issue: silos. Together with Professor Ryan Hamilton, Colin explores why siloed thinking leads to incoherent customer experiences, how internal motivations can conflict with CX goals, and what leaders must do to ensure learning, trust, and advocacy remain priorities. A must-listen for CX professionals and senior leaders alike. Best Quote: "Who decides? That is the question every leadership team...
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The Thrill of the Chase: Why Anticipation Beats Ownership
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Episode Overview Ever buy something you couldnât wait to getâand then let it sit in the box for days (or weeks)? Youâre not alone. Guest host Morgan Ward joins Ryan Hamilton to explore why we often love the pursuit of products more than the possession of them. From unopened tools and âsomedayâ sweaters to the viral Stanley Cup craze, they unpack the psychology of anticipation, dopamine, and why the thrill fades once the package arrives. This episode reveals whatâs really driving that âadd to cartâ impulseâand how brands can design experiences that move customers from wanting...
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When Rebrands Go Wrong: Lessons for Customer Experience Leaders
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, Professor Ryan Hamilton is joined by guest host Ben Shaw to explore the high-stakes world of rebranding. From Cracker Barrelâs logo backlash to Jaguarâs radical design overhaul, they unpack what happens when brands chase new audiences at the expense of their loyal customers. The conversation dives into the tension between rebranding vs. repositioning, why heritage brands face special challenges, how politics and culture can hijack brand decisions, and practical lessons for leaders trying to grow without alienating their core base. Key Takeaways ...
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AI That Listens: Why Real-Time Feedback is the Future of Customer Experience
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Summary Traditional customer feedback is broken. Post-call surveys and quarterly reports are too slow, cumbersome, and overly focused on the companyâs needs rather than the customerâs reality. By the time insights land on a dashboard, the customer has already leftâor worse, lost trust. In this episode of The Intuitive Customer, I (Colin Shaw) and Professor Ryan Hamilton sit down with Devidas Desai, SVP of Product Leader at ASAPP, to explore how AI that listens is reshaping the way organizations understand and respond to customers in the moment. We delve into why silence doesnât mean...
info_outlineIn this episode of The Intuitive Customer, Professor Ryan Hamilton is joined by guest co-host Ben Shaw, Chief Strategy Officer at MullenLowe, to explore the enduring role of brand archetypes in marketing and customer experience. They revisit the origins of archetypes in Jungian psychology and the influential book The Hero and the Outlaw (Pearson & Mark), before debating how useful the framework remains today. Together, they discuss the power of archetypes to create consistency, unlock creativity, and guide internal decision-making while also recognizing their limitations, risks of rigidity, and occasional resemblance to horoscopes. The conversation ranges from brand strategy in B2B to the impact of AI agents on future purchasing, highlighting how archetypes can still be adapted, evolved, and made practical for modern brand building.
đ Key Takeaways
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Archetypes as tools, not rules: Archetypes provide a shared language for teams and a lens for decision-making, but they shouldnât become a straightjacket.
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Sub-archetypes unlock creativity: Going beyond the 12 canonical archetypes helps brands avoid sameness and find distinctiveness in crowded categories.
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Accessibility matters: Archetypes are most effective when they make complex strategy simple and relatableâotherwise they risk losing non-marketing stakeholders.
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Playing against type: Some of the most disruptive brands (e.g., Liquid Death) succeed precisely by defying category-expected archetypes.
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Archetypes in B2B: While not always necessary, they can still be useful to express human needs like trust, security, or freedom, even in highly functional categories.
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AI and archetypes: The rise of AI agents in commerce could challenge the role of storytelling in decision-making, but also presents opportunities for brands to encode their archetypes into machine-readable signals.
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Healthy ambiguity: Like many frameworks, archetypes work best when used as a catalyst for debate, inspiration, and consistency but not as a rigid formula.
đ Resources Mentioned
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The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes â Carol Pearson & Margaret Mark
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Carl Jungâs theories of archetypes and collective unconscious
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Example brands: Liquid Death, Old Spice, Superman, The Beatles
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Applications of AI & Large Language Models in creative brand strategy