Method

We derive personas from motivation, not from keywords

A persona derived from keywords reflects the brand's own language back at it, and misses every question not asked in that language. What matters is not who is asking but what they want: two people asking about the same product ask completely different questions if they expect different things.

What we use · 1

Censydiam: the motivation wheel

Ipsos's motivation framework. Eight motivations on two axes, derived from Freud's release/repression mechanism and Adler's pairing of power-seeking and belonging. What matters to us is this: motivation changes the shape of the question. Security asks for a guarantee, Recognition asks “which is the best”, Belonging asks “what is everyone using”. These are not synonyms; a brand can be present in one and absent from the others.

Security

Taking no risk, wanting a guarantee, being at ease.

Questions this motivation produces

“{marka} güvenilir mi, garantisi var mı?”
“{marka} ile çalışırken risk var mı?”
“{kategori} alırken nelere dikkat etmeliyim?”

Absent here: An audience looking for reassurance does not come back if it sees a negative source in the answer. If you are not writing the answer to this question, someone else is.

We do not count the wheel, we measure the spread

A persona portfolio can count four motivations and still sit entirely in the control half: four careful, comparison-shaped questions, and nothing from anyone excited or looking to belong. Counting motivations scores that as “coverage”; measuring quadrant spread does not. A portfolio has to cover at least three quadrants.

On the record: Censydiam is a commercial segmentation framework, not a validated psychometric scale. It works here not because it describes anyone's psyche, but because it reliably produces different questions. That is all we need from it.

What we use · 2

Brand archetypes and drift

A correction first: these twelve archetypes are not Jung's. Jung never enumerated twelve. The list is Carol Pearson's, from Awakening the Heroes Within (1991); Margaret Mark and Pearson then applied it to branding in The Hero and the Outlaw (2001). “Jungian archetypes” is a marketing habit, and it should not be repeated by a product sold on a claim to measure.

Sage

Knows what is true, and teaches it to you.

Voice: Data, method, sources. Evidence over assertion.

Cost of drift: If your expertise claim is not visible, you are compared on price; the Sage position is the most expensive one to win back once lost.

Ruler

Offers control and order. It is the sector's standard.

Voice: Scale, leadership, enterprise references.

Cost of drift: If the leadership position is not visible to the engine, a large client files you under 'small supplier'.

Caregiver

Protects you and your family. It stands beside you.

Voice: Trust, support, continuity. The language of family and community.

Cost of drift: A brand whose promise is trust, described by the engine as 'cheap', has that promise directly weakened.

Explorer

Finds what is new and pushes the boundary out.

Voice: Discovery, freedom, the first experience.

Cost of drift: An innovative position described as 'long-established, traditional' does not land with a young audience.

Creator

Lets you make what you imagined.

Voice: Design, originality, making.

Cost of drift: When the originality claim disappears, the product is put on the same shelf as its standard equivalents.

Magician

Transforms. Makes the impossible possible.

Voice: Transformation, technology, 'you did not see how it happened'.

Cost of drift: When a transformation promise is described as 'just a tool', you fall into a price negotiation.

Hero

Achieves the hard thing. Fights for you.

Voice: Performance, achievement, effort.

Cost of drift: If a performance claim is not backed by measurable evidence the engine does not repeat it; the claim falls quietly.

Everyman

For everyone. Unshowy, reachable.

Voice: Plain, warm, 'one of us'.

Cost of drift: This is a position you earn, not one you fall into; a premium brand that slides here cannot defend its price.

Lover

Closeness, beauty, desire.

Voice: Sensory, aesthetic, the language of relationship.

Cost of drift: When an aesthetic position is described in functional language, the justification for a premium price disappears.

Jester

Entertains. Makes life lighter.

Voice: Witty, warm, outside the mould.

Cost of drift: When a playful position is described in serious language the brand voice disappears; this archetype is the easiest to erase.

Rebel

Breaks the rule. Stands against the incumbent.

Voice: Opposition, challenge.

Cost of drift: When a challenger position is described as 'one of the sector's players', its reason for existing is erased.

Innocent

Simple, clean, honest.

Voice: Transparency, naturalness, plainness.

Cost of drift: If a naturalness claim has no evidence the engine does not carry it; the phrasing 'claims to be' lowers trust.

The measurable part: drift

The archetype itself is a label. What can be measured is the gap between the archetype a brand intends and the archetype an engine projects. A company that positions itself as the Sage and is described by ChatGPT as the Everyman — cheap, accessible, fine — has not lost visibility; it is fully visible, as something else. Every mention counter on the market scores that as a success.

The standard criticism applies to us too: archetype matching is done after the fact, never predicted in advance. So drift is an indicator of mismatch, not evidence of causation.

What we use · 3

The shadow: this part really is Jung

GoBot and the shadow behind him: the silhouette holds tools he is not holding

In Jung the persona is the mask: “a compromise between the individual and society as to what a person should appear to be”. The shadow is the part that does not fit into the mask. Jung's warning was about identifying too closely with the mask: when a person defines themselves only by the side they want shown, the rest does not disappear, it just becomes invisible.

Brands do the same thing. The difference is that with a brand both texts are written down, so the gap between them can be measured.

persona: What the brand says about itself on its own pages. This is the text it controls.
shadow: Everything the engines say that never appears on those pages. The part it does not control, and usually does not know about.

Measured on our own brands

GoVista 71%, a real shadow. In its shadow is Samsung MagicInfo: a real rival that never appears once on its own site, and that the engines name beside it. That is a content gap, and it can be closed by writing.

GoPeople 33%, not a shadow but a name collision. Two thirds of what the engines say comes from gopeople.com.au: australian, runners, uber, doordash, amazon flex. Our GoPeople is an HR assistant that works over WhatsApp; those belong to a courier company on another continent. Nothing you write here changes it. The remedy is entity disambiguation, not content.

Telling the two apart matters more than the number itself. Unlike archetype drift, both are falsifiable: it is either on your site or it is not, the engine either says it or it does not, the source is either your domain or it is not. A client can check every line.

What we do not use

Things that are not axes

Our persona axes are limited to things that predict purchasing behaviour and can be falsified. Religion, denomination and political opinion are not axes. Article 6 of the Turkish data protection law treats them as special-category data, and a brand visibility measurement has no need of them.

Censydiam is not a validated psychometric scale either; all we expect from it is that it produces different questions, and whether it does can be checked. That is our criterion for putting a framework on the list: can what it produces be checked.

16 personas, 8 motivations, one question

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