THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Jennifer Kem:
Your brand is the soul of how you’re communicating, how you help people, and what experience they can expect to have in the world. And so in my mind, no pun intended, I really believe the brand is your art and the rest is science. Marketing is a science. Sales is a science. But your brand is the soul of how you’re presenting yourself in the world in all forms.
Speaker 2:
It’s The Inspiration Place Podcast, with artist, Miriam Schulman. Welcome to The Inspiration Place Podcast, an art world insider podcast for artists, by an artist, where each week, we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, hello there, passion maker. This is Miriam Schulman, your curator of inspiration. And welcome back to The Inspiration Place Podcast. I am so grateful that you’re here. Today we’re talking all about branding and how that can help you sell more art. Today’s guest is a San Francisco Bay area based branding building and leadership expert, who gets entrepreneurs or art-preneurs like us, seen, heard and paid for being themselves. She’s the creator of the Master Brand Method, a framework to develop powerful brand archetypes that win customers’ hearts, leveraging her 20 years of corporate experience and her launching of multiple companies. She uses the Master Brand Method in strategic consulting for emerging entrepreneurs, celebrity brands like Oprah Winfrey Network and Steve Harvey, and major corporations, including Version, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Bank of Hawaii.
Now you’re going to want to stay until the very end because she’s going to share a personality assessment to help you figure out your brand archetype. If you’re as obsessed as I am with personality quizzes, you are going to love this one because this personality quiz actually help you learn how to talk about your art and to sell more of it. Please welcome to The Inspiration Place, Jennifer Kem. Well, hey there, Jen. Welcome to the show.
Jennifer Kem:
Oh, I’m so excited to be here. Thanks, Miriam.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, first of all, before we get into all the juicy stuff today, I wanted to ask you about one of the traditions that I saw you posting on your Instagram page. I loved seeing your family gathering, serving the food on banana leaves. Can you tell us more about that?
Jennifer Kem:
Oh, yeah. I love that you’re asking about that. So that’s what we call … I’m Filipino by ethnicity, and in our culture, we have something we call a food boodle, or a way to gather when you eat with your hands because back in the day, our ancestors’ time, they didn’t use cutlery. And if you have a Filipino grandma, you know that your Filipino grandma is probably not using cutlery either to eat their rice and food. And so a food boodle is where we make a bunch of ethnic cuisine and we make a bunch of white rice, and we put it on banana leaves on a long table. And we eat together from the middle of the table. And so it was something that I never got to host before, but I’ve been to other relatives’ food boodles, so it was exciting for me to host my first one. It was so much fun. We’re going to now make it a quarterly tradition in my family.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s so cool. I’ve tried other cuisines where you do that, like Ethiopian. They actually give you this kind of spongy bread, so you’re actually using bread to eat with. Do you have something like that with your cuisine also, or no?
Jennifer Kem:
The banana leaves actually, you can take the banana leaf and then kind of scrunch it together and eat it with your fingers.
Miriam Schulman:
So do you eat the leaf? Or do you just use that as a utensil?
Jennifer Kem:
You use it as a utensil. But we also just don’t use it at all. We just literally … I think the other thing, or the mechanism, or the vehicle for food is the rice because it’s sticky, so you can sop up things with the rice, and you kind of put it into a ball and eat it that way too.
Miriam Schulman:
Almost like a rice dumpling.
Jennifer Kem:
Yes, yes. Exactly.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m really into food, obviously.
Jennifer Kem:
I’m a foodie. There’s not food out there that I won’t try.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I recently went to Israel to visit my son. And he said to me … My son is 21. And he said, “What do you want to do when you come?” I was like, “Eat.”
Jennifer Kem:
Yes, I love that.
Miriam Schulman:
And I came back a little bigger than when I left, but it was worth it.
Jennifer Kem:
That means it was a good trip.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s right.
Jennifer Kem:
That’s how I [inaudible] things. You know?
Miriam Schulman:
The food was amazing. Okay, so now we’re going to totally switch gears. I don’t have a good segue from food into branding. I mean, I probably could’ve come up with something [inaudible]. I’ve never been good with that. We’re talking about tuna sandwiches, and that is how we now announce beef ghoul or whatever it is. So you are an expert on all things branding. And first of all, just to take it back to step zero, can you just define what a brand is?
Jennifer Kem:
I’m so glad you asked that question because I think it is such an ambiguous term that a lot of people not just wonder what it really is, but also it’s really status quo thinks of it as your logo, your colors, your typography. And yes, that is part of your brand. But what a brand really is based on my definition of branding is how you make people feel through what you offer. And mechanics of vehicles for that include things like your colors, your typography, your website, even if you use funnels or other fancy things to get people to know who you are, social media. But those are mechanisms. Your brand is the soul of how you’re communicating, how you help people, and what experience they can expect to have in the world.
And so in my mind, no pun intended, I really believe the brand is your art and the rest is science. Marketing is a science. Sales is a science. But your brand is the soul of how you’re presenting yourself in the world in all forms.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So then the next obvious question is: Do artists need to think about branding? Or how should artists think about branding? If we think the obvious question is going to be yes.
Jennifer Kem:
Yeah. I mean, I think my answer is yes. I think everybody should be thinking about their brand because the brand is what we buy. And what I mean by that is there are three types of brands. There are personal brands, offer brands, and company brands. And in the case of artists, your offer brand is your art, whatever form that is, whatever, if you’re a creative, whatever form. I mean, I consider myself a creative, even though I can’t draw a lick and I can’t … I’m clumsy with my hands, but I can visualize the future. And business is kind of my art, so I really know how to make it happen. So I consider myself, when I think about my offers, I think of them as: How can I make sure that people see them as valuable and trustworthy?
Because ultimately, that’s what a brand is doing. And so the offer’s also your product. Right? And if a collector wants to buy your art, they’re looking for that special something that is in alignment with their tastes, their preferences, but they’re also attracted to the story that you’re telling through your art, and certainly through your marketing. And so it is important because even if you’re a niche artist or a niche creative … I know that you’ve interview Ashley Longshore on your podcast, and I love her because she is just herself, and I collect her art too. In fact, I’m looking at a piece right on my wall right now.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh. What is it?
Jennifer Kem:
It’s the butterfly with the emeralds. It’s a butterfly. Let’s put it that way. I don’t know exactly, but I love emeralds. It’s my stone. I’m not a May baby, but I wear my wedding ring as an emerald. When I saw it and she was putting it up, I was like, “I need to have that piece.” And I have the little Obama tray that she has. I have some of her purses. I collect a lot of her things. My point is that as an artist, she’s really branded herself as really pop art, very bold, very unapologetic, very provocative, and that’s her brand as an artist.
Miriam Schulman:
And then I would also say before we get too deep into that, it’s more than just what you’re offering, it’s what you would describe as a personal brand. There is so much, and you can use Ashley Longshore as an example, with artists, there is so much about who we are and who we present to the world. So I see that artists are both an offer brand and very much a personal brand because it’s very difficult to separate the art from the artist.
Jennifer Kem:
Absolutely. A million percent, the art is your output, but the personal brand, who you are, that’s really what the collector is aligning and resonating with. Right? [crosstalk].
Miriam Schulman:
Think about yourself. I mean, there’s a million artists who do butterflies.
Jennifer Kem:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
So why an Ashley Longshore butterfly?
Jennifer Kem:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s not just because of the way it looks.
Jennifer Kem:
Exactly. Her values are aligned with mine, and that’s what a brand too is, it’s speaking your values to the world through again, your art and your messaging. And when we talk about brand, a lot of people assign marketing to brand, which marketing is part of branding, but it’s actually more about messaging than it is about marketing. And so I think that’s a real important distinction when you think of brand.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s beautiful. That is so good. Okay, now that we’ve defined what a brand is and why we should care about it, are we ready to talk about archetypes yet?
Jennifer Kem:
We can, absolutely.
Miriam Schulman:
Or is there something that we need to bridge before we get there?
Jennifer Kem:
No, I think this is a good segue to that because I think it gives some structure to some of the things that I’m talking about that I hope will support the creatives listening in figuring out how to build their personal and their offer brands in a way that feels aligned and not even … Because I know that because I also … I consider myself a creative. I work with creatives. Their making money part can be the struggle of the conversation, or feeling like we have to put ourselves out in-authentically in order to make money. And one thing that I love about brand archetypes is it gives you a structure to feel more confident in you’re you’re messaging yourself. So shall I just go into what it’s all about?
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. First of all, what is an archetype?
Jennifer Kem:
Yeah, yeah. So I didn’t make up the term. It was first coined by Carl Jung, the socio-psychologist, J-U-N-G. And he also, if you’re into taking personality assessments, he’s the godfather of the Myers-Briggs assessment. He defined archetypes as the characters by which society is inspired by. It’s the heart of even, if you’ve heard about the hero’s journey and storytelling, the hero is one of the archetypes that Carl Jung identified. And so there’s 12 archetypes that … Archetypes are everything. I like to say if you think of a thought leader, that’s an archetype of a thing.
But when we talk about Jung’s archetypes, there are 12 that he coined. And I learned about them early in my career. I actually started out my career in the advertising world. I was a junior copywriter for Ogilvy, which is one the biggest advertising agencies in the world. And David Ogilvy is the godfather of marketing and advertising. And anyway, I learned about it there. And I was, as a junior copywriter, I wasn’t writing any copy. I was really getting coffee for the account executives. And I learned that this is how they came up with really influential messaging in the marketplace. And so let me explain it a little bit more. And I think I should do it through brands. Can I do that?
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Jennifer Kem:
Because I think it’ll make it easier.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Jennifer Kem:
I think two brands that we all know are Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Right? So I’m going to use them as examples. Now Coca-Cola is a muse archetype. They’re a muse archetype. And the muse archetypes main thing that it wants, and the character that it’s trying to express and message is nostalgia, childlike wonder, hearkening back to a time that is beautiful, fun, and delightful. That’s the muse’s message. And then Pepsi is a rule archetype, and the ruler archetype is more about frankly, ownership, command, the top of the food chain, ruling over others. And the rule archetype also uses celebrity a lot in their marketing, so if you look at Pepsi’s advertising, typically you’ll see that they had Britney Spears and Michael Jackson. And a lot of celebrities have been behind their brand.
And for Coke, who you think of are the polar bears and Christmas and that type of thing. So I hope that verbal, visual, I’m trying to give you all as you’re listening, that you see that they have really owned how they want to be seen in the world through this archetype model. And they’ve been consistent with it. And so archetypes are used in branding to be able to establish the character that you want to be seen as, and that character’s authentic to you. It’s not you’re just making it up and wanting to create this superficial character. We talked about Ashley Longshore. I want to give you an example. I’ve never had Ashley take my archetype assessment, but I can tell you that just as a brand expert, I could tell you that she’s a provocateur archetype.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes, definitely.
Jennifer Kem:
The provocateur is, they’re funny, they use mirth and fun to get attention. They are very much tricksters. And when I say that, trickster in an authentic way, they poke fun at societal status quo things. They’re unapologetic, and they’re also holding court, meaning they are holding court for their message. And so she’s obviously a provocateur. And that’s why she’s so success in her niche. And I mean, Andy Warhol is a pop artist, but very different. Right? I think of Andy Warhol as the muse. He’s a much archetype, where as Ashley as a pop artist is a provocateur. And so again, hopefully this visual, verbal is helping you all think of it when you think of your own character, which is the archetype in your own personal and offer brand.
Miriam Schulman:
And those of you who don’t follow Ashley Longshore, I’m just going to give you an example of something she posted recently on Instagram. She said one of weekend to do list, she had a whole list, and each one was more outrageous than the next. But one of them was she wanted to find out how to milk an oat.
Jennifer Kem:
That is so good. That is so her.
Miriam Schulman:
Right?
Jennifer Kem:
That is so her.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s so her. It’s so on the edge of raunchy, and sometimes she does go there, and sometimes she doesn’t. And it’s that line that she walks that is so brilliant.
Jennifer Kem:
And it’s her. What you really admire besides the fact that she has these pithy, smart things that she says, is that you really know that’s her. You really know this is who she is both on social as well as in her real life. And I think that especially for us now, social media’s obviously been an important marketing mechanism for letting people know how we can help them, which is my definition of marketing. Marketing to me is how you’re helping people, and then showing people how you do it. But I love it because I think artists have a chance to have real stuff to show. Artists have real tangible things to show that are beautiful and emotional. And I think artists are well positioned to be great at building their brands as a result of that.
Miriam Schulman:
So how many different archetypes are there?
Jennifer Kem:
So there are 12, but in my model, what I, after all my research and study around this powerful influential idea, is there are three that really drive you in terms of building your brand and the characters. So there are three main characters in your story of your brand, and so there are what we call the dominant archetype, the intrinsic archetype, and the intuitive archetype. And the most important of the three is the dominant because that’s the main way you want your audience to see you. Right?
So when I named the Ashley and the Coca-Cola and the Pepsi, those were their dominant archetypes. But there are two supporting players that support that, and that gives what I call the flavor and the seasoning. They’re like the salt and the pepper to your message because chicken doesn’t taste good with seasoning. Right? And for those of you who aren’t into chicken, vegetables don’t even … They taste better with a little seasoning. And I also like to think of it as it’s how your message sounds on people’s ears.
And so what I mean by that is if you think of Bon Jovi, the band, I hope most people know who Bon Jovi is. There Jon Bon Jovi. Right? And then there Richie Sambora, and then there’s this third guy that nobody knows who he is. But without him, they wouldn’t sound like Bon Jovi, and that’s what the brand archetype influence mix, I call it the AIM, the archetype influence mix. That’s the mix of the archetypes that help you play the best sound on your audience’s ears, if that makes sense. And so there are three archetypes. We actually have all 12 archetypes in who we are, but we have three top ones that we if we get to understand them, we can be more stronger in our messaging.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So with your assessment, it will spit out three different archetypes.
Jennifer Kem:
It’ll give you the full reports on how to use it, how to take a look at some of the language that you’re using inside of your marketing and on your website, maybe even the way that you express how your art feels to people. And so yes, I’m excited because we’re going to give that assessment to your listeners.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. Let’s not make them wait. Suddenly, they’re in the car and they get to where they want to go, they’re going to be in suspense. So what is that URL? We could drop it again at the end.
Jennifer Kem:
Yeah. It’s confidently.me/inspiration. So confidently.me/inspiration. And let me just tell you this, if you are driving, or you stop on the side of the road because you get so excited by this conversation, I ask you for two things when you take this assessment. Number one, it is a real assessment, it’s a psychological diagnostic that I created in conjunction with University of Monterey. It’s over 10 years that it’s been out here. It’s not some type of quick [inaudible], what’s your Disney princess kind of quiz. It’s not one of those things. It’s an actual assessment. So because of that, these two things. Number one, it’s going to take you about 15 minutes to do. It’s not some wham, bam, thank you, ma’am kind of quiz.
Number two, you want to take it when you don’t have a lot of distraction. And you want to take it from a place of your present self. Don’t take it from you imagining your future self. That’s really important in order for that to happen. And these instructions are in the archetype assessment, but I like to say them because I know you are getting excited because I got excited whenever I hear about a personality test I can take. But I just wanted to make that point, that it’s a real assessment.
Miriam Schulman:
And by the way, I am obsessed with personality tests and I make my entire team take them whenever I find them. I know every single, the Gretchen Rubin four tendencies, all my team, the Kolbe, the Myers-Briggs. And we even put the answers for each team member in the [inaudible], so I can look it up. Oh, yeah, she’s a this, or whatever, or he’s a that. So that’s awesome. Okay. So this is what I am challenging all the listeners to do. Go to confidently.me/inspiration. Take the assessment. And what I want you to do is when you find out what your archetype is, tag me and Jennifer on social.
Jennifer Kem:
I would love that.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. So I’m at Schulman Art. And Jen, what is your social media handle?
Jennifer Kem:
Yep. On Instagram, I’m at Jennifer.Kem, K-E-M.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So we’ll make sure the link to the assessment and the link to our social media handles are all in the show notes, which you’re going to be able to find at schulmanart.com/188. This was so much fun, Jennifer. Do you have any last words for my listeners before we call this podcast complete?
Jennifer Kem:
Well, I just want to say that creatives heal the world. I really, truly believe that. And in fact, on an archetype note, as a brand expert and a brand futurist, I get asked by a lot of media does is future of business and small business look like, and I said that the future is the creator archetype. The creator archetype is one of the archetypes of the 12. Now as an artist, as you heard with the Ashley example that we keep bringing up, Ashley Longshore, she’s not a creator archetype as her dominant archetype. It might be in her mix, but it’s definitely not her type archetype. So being a creator doesn’t just mean, oh, I must be a creator archetype. You actually might be surprised that you’re not a creator archetype.
But as a collective, as a society, we need more art. We need more real things versus just manufactured things, or fake things, fake news things, or deep fake on social media things. Artists have always contributed to the world’s sanity, even when we’re not feeling sane. So I just want to encourage you that if you’re an artist, creative, someone who is wanting so badly to help other people through your art, please keep going because we need more of you.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, that was so beautiful, Jennifer. Thank you so much for being with me here today.
Jennifer Kem:
Thank you, Miriam. Thanks for having me on.
Miriam Schulman:
By the way, don’t forget to check out the personality quiz. It’s confidently.me/inspiration. I’m going to personally take the quiz as well. I’ll be posting my brand archetype on Instagram, and I would love to hear yours, so make sure you tag me at Schulman Art over on Instagram. Love to hear what result you got. All right, thanks so much, everyone, for being with us today. I will see you the same time, same place next week. Stay inspired.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for listening to The Inspiration Place Podcast. Connect with us on Facebook, at Facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram at @schulmanart, and of course, on schulmanart.com.
Subscribe & Review in iTunes
Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don’t want you to miss an episode. I’m adding a bunch of bonus episodes to the mix and if you’re not subscribed there’s a good chance you’ll miss out on those. Click here to subscribe in iTunes!
Now if you’re feeling extra loving, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes, too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast and they’re also fun for me to go in and read. Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is. Thank you!