Is a certain brand of pickup truck a “warrior” or a “jester”? Is a bank seen as a “mentor” or an “explorer”? Those are the questions Maggie Taylor answers for her clients.

Taylor is chief executive of Added Value US in Universal City, the U.S. office for a large European marketing firm. The international agency announced late last month that it has adopted the practice of evaluating clients’ commercial brands using – oddly enough – Carl Jung’s theory of archetypes.

Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist, believed people respond to powerful symbols – archetypes – that communicate personality traits throughout history and across cultures.

“A brand is a product with a personality,” Taylor explained. “Archetypal analysis is a tool for clients.”

The agency has invented a board game that helps companies understand the archetypes of their products. For example, players select cards based on whether an image or a word matches their brand. At the end, they turn over the cards and see the name of the archetype that, such as “magician” or “caregiver” that would best match their product.

If the cards show a variety of archetypes, it indicates confusion in the brand’s personality. Then the agency will discuss the product’s problems with the client.

Taylor has performed this exercise for clients such as Reliant Energy and Ford Motor Co. She declined to reveal the archetypes that match Ford models, citing client confidentiality.

However, she did say that just because a truck is a “warrior” doesn’t mean the buyer is.

“A brand speaks to the aspirational self, not necessarily the day-to-day person who we are,” she said.