Michael Campion: The Child perhaps stands juxtaposed against the Guide. Shall we talk about the Guide as a brand archetype?

Bob Sheard: If we want to segue from Child to Guide, then the way to do that is via Star Wars. So in Star Wars the Guide role is Obi-Wan Kenobi playing the Guide and mentor, to then in the first one, almost Child Luke Skywalker. Originally, in Greek mythological terms was Chiron. But Chiron was half man, half horse. He had all the intellect of a human and all the intuition of an animal. He spent 40 years in the wilderness honing the instincts of survival as an animal but the honing, the wisdom of a human. And when the gods went to war they thought he would be quite handy. So they got him back, put him on the battlefield and he overcame everybody, to the point where the gods then sent their children to be schooled by him in the arts of warfare. So he schooled Hercules and Achilles. So it kind of rings true when you start to think about the themes of being in balance with nature and the wisdom of nature and deploying them through the martial arts etc. And you start to think, oh yeah, that is a bit Jedi, it's a bit ninja. So you start to see that thematically in storytelling in Hollywood. So it's definitely Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, it's Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. The effect of this role is really powerful. It's the effect of empowerment, it's giving you the magic of trusting yourself. The place is the place of transformation. The ritual is the ritual of preparation. The time is the time of challenge. The rational values here are ones where we inspire, we mentor and we encourage with the emotional values that we change perspective, we become experienced, we become intuitive, and the stand for in terms of charisma is we stand for fulfillment and potential, and we stand against being unfulfilled. So, as we've talked about in culture, it's Obi-Wan Kenobi and it's Gandalf, but a great female version of it is Luana Johnson in Dangerous Minds, it's also Brendan in Sing Street and it's Mr Han in Karate Kid. In all of those films there is the imparting of knowledge, there is leading by example, there's the accepting of mistakes, there's the uncovering of the latent hero, there is the pathway being demonstrated by perspective, and we see that in brands. Microsoft has adopted a Guide archetype, This Girl Can is the Guide, Hyundai is a Guide, Beats is a Guide and Headspace is a Guide, and they all use the narratives of imparting wisdom, leading by example, being accepting, uncovering the path and showing new perspectives. So it's a very strong role.

Michael Campion: I think it's very obvious why a lot of educational institutions or education apps would adopt the archetype of the Guide. Can you think of maybe I don't know if there's any examples from brands you've worked with at Fresh, or just ones in the wider marketplace where the choice of Guide was perhaps counterintuitive

Bob Sheard: I know that's a bit of a challenge. Two examples Bear Grylls was once a Special Forces soldier. He then climbed Everest, youngest Brit to climb Everest and then he became an adventurer. So on the face of it he's either a warrior or he's an adventurer. But what we sort of recognized is, as he was getting older, we could future-proof his brand by turning him into the Guide. The warrior that once was the warrior, the adventurer that once was the adventurer, that's got the scars and come back and imparts that wisdom on his audience. So we positioned him very definitely as Guide, which helped future-proof him and that helps design and develop their programming, their new brand relationships, their partnerships etc. The second one is a brand that we worked on, which is the Australian sports compression wear brand, 2XU. As we've said before, Nike are the individuals, Adidas are the teams. You've got two places to go, you can either become the fan or you can become the coach, and so with 2XU we built their proposition of them being the coach - the marginal gains. So the marginal gains for the athlete is compression wear that enables you to recover more quickly, train more hard - train hard, play easy. It was all about the coach archetype that was pivoting off Guide. So in that one you just look for Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday. That's the one. That's there, we pivoted that.