An effective brand personality is something your audience can relate to and interact with. In order to get this feeling, your brand personality should have a set of human characteristics that make your brand more human.
Explorer brands promote adventure and searching for the mystery and the unknown. Your brand’s main talents are autonomy, ambition, and being true to one’s self, so create journeys for your audience and help them escape the boredom of everyday life. Your brand’s voice is exciting, fearless, and daring and your brand's strongest motivations are independence and freedom.
Before you get deeper into the explorer archetype, there are some questions I want you to think about and link your answers back to your brand strategy...
What does the word freedom mean to you and your audience?
What adjectives you would use to describe your brand?
What is the purpose behind your brand’s existence?
What are some brands you look up to and aspire to become like?
What drives the explorer?
As the proud owner of a brand with an explorer personality, you will want to have something behind your brand to help push it forward and to grow. These are your brand purpose and brand vision.
Remember that brand purpose is internal, it is what drives you and your brand to continue, and brand vision is the long-term goal you want to achieve.
Providing Freedom
Freedom is what is most important to all explorer personality types. Have you put any importance on that word or the meaning behind it?
Note. Keep in mind that freedom can be understood in many different ways. It can be the physical escape from a location, the inner want to be however you want without hindrance or restraint, or the overarching goal to provide unlimited paths and options to everyone in the world.
Whatever your definition or reason behind it, look deeper into yourself and your brand and pull that innovation out.
Important! Freedom does not have to mean escape! It can be a more personal level of inner freedom or release.
The reason you come up with, this is what you want to talk about with your audience and provide to them.
Freedom
The Explorer drives
When you were thinking of adjectives to describe your brand, these can be linked or related to your brand values. You already know all about brand values and you have your own and a few brand value statements.
Now, I want you to link the explorer personality drives and your own brand values.
Adventurous
Exploratory
Curious
Intuitive
Liberated
Important! These are the drives behind explorer personalities. If they don’t match your brand values, that is okay! Instead of looking at them as value words, look at them as the result you and your clients will have after working together.
As the explorer archetype, your goal would be to experience a fulfilling and authentic life. Your brand can do this through the gift of...
Ambition
Also, the explorer archetype seeks freedom, adventure, and independence. They yearn for paradise and the freedom to find out who they are through exploring the world. Their core desire is the freedom of discovery in themselves and the world.
The explorer purpose
Every brand is as unique as the person that stands behind it. Even so, we use categories and archetypes, and different classifications to better understand how we fit with others.
Keeping that in mind, I want you to review the purpose behind explorer brands and compare it with your own brand purpose.
Experience a better, more authentic, more fulfilling life.
You can do this by helping your audience discover new things. Your best strategy to do this is to acknowledge modern confinements and work around them and seek out new things.
The Explorer examples
When you were working on your brand positioning, you got to look for aspirations for what you want your brand to become. You already have your own goals, but I want you to take a look at these three examples of explorer brands...
NASA
National Geographic
Jeep
I want you to ask yourself if any of them could be an aspiration for your own brand and if so, how.
Note. Remember that we are not talking about the product here, but the brand personality that sells it (or the cost of said products and services).
How to reach out as an explorer
As an explorer personality type, your brand attracts a wide range of audiences. No matter who you are addressing, though, your goal is to help them grow.
Here are some tips on how to talk to your audience and put your explorer personality forward, as someone who is exciting and daring...
Use exciting, fearless, and daring language.
Motivate them to experience new things.
Push the boundaries and take risks.
Be daring and spontaneous.
Be the first to break ground through innovation.
Explore many things and take them with you.
Show your diversity of talents and knowledge.
Be tireless and ambitious.
Promote curiosity and find meaning.
Celebrate the journey more than the wins.
Connect with
Since the main goal of the explorer is to experience a fulfilling and authentic life, this brand personality attracts a wide range of audiences, including most of the other archetypes. Below is a list of a few audience archetypes that are attracted to caregiver brands and what caregiver brands can use to appeal to them...
Sage. Truth, knowledge, wisdom, intelligence, factual
Outlaw. Revolution, change, challenge, encouraging, empowering
Magician. Transformation, opportunity, fantasy, knowledge, mystery
Jester. Fun, happiness, entertainment, memorable, positivity, laughter
Creator. Freedom, choices, inspire, imagination, innovation
Start creating content for your audience
As part of your brand strategy, you already know who your people are and where to find them. Now, it's time to talk to them! Here are a few content and conversation prompts you can use to display your explorer personality...
You only get one life, get out and make it count
If you don’t like where you are, move
Every day is a chance to change your life
Explain your yearning for paradise and perfection
Tip. You may be tempted to use YOLO everywhere, but one of the things that explorers are known for is searching for the unknown. They already know this message and it doesn't resonate with the experienced explorers. On the other hand, if your aim is to attract new audience into your brand, ease them in before asking them to go climbing Mt. Everest.
You can display your explorer archetype through two main strategies...
Celebrate the journey
Acknowledge modern confinements
The Explorer voice
Your brand voice is a unique element of your brand’s communication with your audience. It remains consistent throughout all the content that you create.
You will be working on finding your brand voice after this module, however, your brand voice has input from both you and your brand personality. In addition, a brand voice is often characterized by both what it is and what it isn’t. Here are some examples of explorer voices...
Exciting, but not provocative
Fearless, but not cocky
Daring, but not audacious
Lively, but not frisky
The Explorer character
You now know a lot more about your brand personality. You have a character, a brand that is a separate entity that will interact and befriend your audience. This character has its own goals, values, and ambitions, as you’ve discovered when working on your brand positioning and core.
But, if we want to make them more human, we want to add a bit extra to it.
At the moment, your brand’s personality is too perfect and structured. Your brand can become more human by being open with its fears, weaknesses, and characteristics.
Knowing these, will help you battle against them and, since there is no person out that doesn’t have these, you will make your brand more approachable to your audience.
The Explorer weaknesses
The things you should be most worried about as an explorer brand are getting trapped and forced to conformity. Make sure to keep your brand from aimless wandering or taking it too far into becoming an outlaw brand. Be careful from experiencing inner emptiness or feeling trapped.
The five things you should avoid in your brand are...
Confinement
Immobility
Conformity
Entrapment
Cautiousness
Now consider your audience.
You’ve written their problems and emotions in your ideal client bio, so take a look at all the negative emotions in there and see if they connect with any of these fears. If so, then these are things you can help them with, as they are dangerous for you and your brand too.
Niching the explorer down
Twelve personalities may seem very limiting, especially when you start thinking that there are almost 8 billion people on earth, half of them are on social media, and all of them fall into these twelve categories.
However, you can narrow your personality down to make it more unique to you. Every archetype has three levels and five sub-archetypes.
Note. Keep in mind that both of these are not static! They change over time as you and your brand evolve.
Explorer levels
The three different levels for each archetype are based on the development within that personality. That means the lower level is less mature while the higher level is more developed.
This is linked to your brand’s vision, figuring out what point you are at now and how your brand personality can grow with your brand, the closer you get to your vision.
Level one. Straightforward in exploring the world and getting out into nature.
Level two. Exploration turns inward into discovering what makes oneself unique.
Level three. Freedom to be completely true to who one is and express that uniqueness fully.
Explorer sub-archetypes
There are five related sub-archetypes within the explorer archetype, which emerge based on particular attributes that are visible within that archetype. That means each sub-archetype has different attributes. This is linked to your brand values and helps you split yourself from the collective within your archetype.
Explorer
The explorer is independent and brave, motivated to experience new things no matter the cost. Explorers push boundaries and take risks on a regular basis. This, unfortunately, can lead them to become alienated or wander aimlessly without true progress. In addition, this wanderlust can transfer to their audience, not giving them a clear direction for their goals.
Adventurer
The adventurer is daring and spontaneous, with an attitude that shows they aren't afraid of anything. Adventurers are recognized by their love for the taste for danger and are thrill-seekers. For them, the rush of adrenaline is a lifeline. This addiction, however, can make it tough for them to find happiness in the more mundane aspects of life.
Pioneer
The pioneer is known for being the first to break ground or to make a discovery. Pioneers are innovative and driven, constantly looking to blaze new paths. In their quest for discovery, pioneers should be careful to avoid burnout or being dissatisfied with being less than the best or the first option. Be careful not to lead your audience into the same trap.
Generalist
The generalist believes that the entire world is open for experience and therefore is stimulated to explore many divergent areas. Generalists have a great diversity of talents and knowledge, and this broad understanding may lead them to think they are overstating or to misrepresent their level of knowledge and experience.
Seeker
The seeker continuously strives to grow and learn. Seekers are tireless and ambitious, and leave no stone unturned in their path to find meaning. Seekers find joy in discovery and adventure rather than relationships and are constantly on the go. This can lead to loneliness and alienation, causing them to pull away from the crowd make it hard to connect.
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