Bob Sheard: So the Visionary is an archetype you would choose if you want the effect of your brand and product to be optimism, the kind of optimism that enables you to see new possibilities in your own lives, have a positive impact on societies as a whole and also inspire a better future. It's an important archetype whose ritual is the reimagining of possible. The time is the time of a new dawn and it's the place of new horizons. These are underpinned by the core rational values of innovation, intuition and potential and the emotional values of empowerment, idealism and conviction. In terms of driving conviction and charisma, what the Visionary stands for is the possible and what they stand against is the impossible. So nothing is impossible with the Visionary. It's all about optimism, driving the possible. If you were to choose this brand in culture, it's really Steve Jobs in the Steve Jobs Apple film. It's Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. It's Abe Lincoln in Lincoln. It's Alan Turing and it's Catherine Johnson in Hidden Figures. And the narratives culturally are those of foresight, those of being able to think conceptually, having a passion for society, being ready to start a small revolution in the name of freedom and to follow all that through with conviction. In brands, we would see it as being Tesla, it's CoinCloud, it's Honda, Netflix and it's Virgin Galactic. All of those brands offering the same narratives of foresight, conceptual thinking, compassion, revolutionary freedom and conviction.

Michael Campion: So Visionary clearly would be an archetype for the bold, the brave.

Bob Sheard: This would be where we would advise a brand to consider Visionary if they had a product or a new product launched that demonstrably was functionally superior to everything that was already available. So once you can demonstrate a gap between the competition and your product in terms of functional superiority, then you can start to look at potentially Visionary as being a really strong brand archetype to align into that kind of product.

Michael Campion: And if you didn't have functional or technical superiority, is that Visionary archetype really going to ring hollow?

Bob Sheard: Not, unless it's there were other actions that the brand did Like. If there were social or cultural actions that the brand did, such as Toms, for example. Toms isn't necessarily a visionary product and it wasn't functionally better than everybody else, but the fact they gave one away as you bought one to help people in impoverished areas then that's a Visionary action, so it's got emotional superiority attached to it.

Michael Campion: Great, okay. That's a useful distinction because you can be absolutely Visionary in your marketing, if not necessarily your product or your service.