The Jester brand archetype: meaning, examples and names

The Jester is the brand that makes things fun. It is funny and playful, and it wins people over by making them laugh rather than by making claims. M&M’s, Old Spice and Duolingo all play it.

It is one of the 12 brand archetypes, the personalities a brand can have if it were a person.

What Jester customers need

To enjoy the moment, laugh and not take life too seriously. A Jester customer is often buying something ordinary: a snack, a deodorant, ten minutes of practice on the bus. They’d rather it came with a grin.

What they fear is boredom: the dull chore, the stiff brand that talks down to them, the ad they’ve seen a hundred times. So a Jester brand never takes itself too seriously. It jokes about itself and its category, and it trusts customers to get the joke.

Brands that play the Jester

• M&M’s has sold chocolate through talking cartoon sweets since the mid-1990s, with sardonic Red and dim, lovable Yellow. The sweets are the comedians.
• Old Spice sold body wash with a parody of body wash ads, and won the Film Grand Prix at Cannes Lions in 2010 for it.
• Duolingo turned its green owl, Duo, into a social media character, and in February 2025 announced his death, as a stunt.

None of them is the Jester because of what they sell. A sweet, a deodorant and a language app have nothing in common. They share a promise: this will be fun.

Watch the Jester in action

Posted online in February 2010 and directed by Tom Kuntz for Wieden+Kennedy, the ad has Isaiah Mustafa, in a towel, talking straight to “ladies”. The bathroom lifts away and he’s on a boat, an oyster in his hand holds “two tickets to that thing you love”, the tickets turn into diamonds, and he ends up on a horse, all in what looks like one continuous shot. Notice what the Jester does here. It mocks every grooming ad’s promise, and still says the brand’s name twice.

When the Jester fits, and when it doesn’t

When it fits: your brand makes a dull category fun: snacks, drinks, games, apps, everyday products and chores people would rather not think about. If your customers ask “why is this so boring?”, the Jester is a natural fit.

When it fights the customer: a product people buy when they are worried or grieving. A Jester bank sounds like it’s joking about your savings. A Jester clinic makes people wonder what else it doesn’t take seriously. And a joke needs a fresh audience: if every competitor is already clowning, being the funny one is no longer a difference.

How the Jester sounds

Bright and quick. The Jester talks fast, plays with words and isn’t afraid to look silly. It prefers a surprising sentence to a safe one.

The words it reaches for come from the world of play: confetti, fizz, pop, wink, bounce, sprinkle, kazoo, jelly, zigzag, yo-yo, pinball. Its images are the fairground, the cartoon, the pratfall, the party popper.

Its names tend to sound bright and quick: short syllables, crisp consonants, a bit of bounce or repetition. A Jester name should be fun to say out loud.

What the Jester does to a name

A Jester name makes people smile before they know what you do.

• Kinds that suit it: lexical names that play with language (puns, rhymes, repeated sounds), invented names with a cartoon bounce, and evocative names taken from the world of play. See the six kinds of startup names for each kind’s traps.
• The trap: the archetype’s own clichés. Jester, Joker, Fun, Silly, Crazy, LOL and Giggle are on thousands of companies, and they tell people you’re funny instead of being funny. Clown logos, too. And a pun that’s clever once can be tiring the hundredth time a customer says it.
• A test: would someone repeat the name to a friend with a grin? If they’d have to explain the joke, it isn’t the Jester.

Good partners for the Jester

Most brands play one personality strongly and borrow from one or two others. The Jester pairs well with:

• The Everyman, for fun for everyone: snacks, drinks and everyday products with no pretence.
• The Creator, for playful tools: apps and toys where the fun is in making something.
• The Outlaw, for cheeky challengers that poke fun at the big names in their category.

A Jester with a Sage can work (a brand that makes hard subjects fun to learn), but it needs care: the jokes have to serve the learning.

The Jester in deepmarks

In the deepmarks brief, two answers point to the Jester:

• “If your brand were a person, what would they be like?” Funny
• “What should your customers feel when they use your brand?” Delighted

deepmarks reads the rest of your brief too, then suggests three personalities, in order, and says why in your own words. If the Jester isn’t among them and you want it, click Change next to the personality on your names, then Read & watch on The Jester, and Use as Primary. The first personality colours most names; the second and third add range.

The names written as a Jester are shown in Fredoka, a soft, rounded, playful sans, over a bright picture of confetti on asphalt.

The Jester in short

• Promise: this will be fun.
• Customers need: to enjoy the moment, laugh and not take life too seriously.
• Sounds: bright, quick, playful.
• Avoid: Jester, Joker, Fun, LOL, and clowns.
• Pairs with: the Everyman, the Creator, the Outlaw.