Brand Archetypes: Straightjacket or Springboard for CX?
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Release Date: 09/20/2025
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...
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Brand Archetypes: Straightjacket or Springboard for CX?
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 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...
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Your Customers are Lazy... and Bored: How to Use That to Your Advantage
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
Your Customers are Lazy... and Bored: How to Use That to Your Advantage Show Notes: This week on The Intuitive Customer, Colin takes a step back and welcomes guest host Morgan Ward to explore one of psychologyâs favourite contradictions: why customers cling to the familiar, yet crave novelty. From music playlists to yogurt purchases, from comfort food to product design, Colin and Morgan unpack why weâre wired for bothâand how brands can use that tension to create better customer experiences. Best Quote from the Episode âFamiliarity earns trust. Novelty earns attention. Get the...
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Why Customer Satisfaction Hasnât Budged in 30 Years: Two new guest experts tell us why
The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth
In this milestone episode, The Intuitive Customer undergoes a transformation. Colin Shaw announces a step back from the regular hosting role, prompting a fresh chapter in the podcastâs evolution. Hosts Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton introduce two new expert contributors â Dr. Morgan Ward, a consumer psychologist, and Ben Shaw, a brand strategist â to bring fresh perspectives on customer behavior, brand experience, and the future of CX. Together, the four hosts discuss the state of customer experience today, particularly in light of the stagnant growth in the American Customer...
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