THE OUTLAW

Rules are meant to be broken

The Outlaw seeks to revolutionize what is not working in society by disrupting the status quo. They are driven by the desire to evoke change through fresh, new, and often anarchic ideas. They are typically skeptical of authoritative systems and believe that by ignoring society’s norms, they will be able to find a way to improve the system. Even though their ideas and actions may seem questionable, and sometimes radical, in their opinion this is the best way to grasp someone’s attention.

This archetype is also called the Activist, Challenger, Enemy, Iconoclast, Liberator, Maverick, Misfit, Rebel, Reformer, Revolutionary, Villain, and Wild Man or Woman.

The 12 Brand Archetypes were developed and articulated in "The Hero and The Outlaw" by Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson

The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes Hardcover - (Amazon Affiliate Link)

OUTLAW MARKETING OPPORTUNITY

The Outlaw may be a good brand identity for your brand if:

  • Customers and employees are feeling very disaffiliated from society or identify with values at odds with those of society at large

  • The function of your product is to destroy something (actually, like a bulldozer, or virtually, like many video games) or is genuinely revolutionary

  • Your product is not very good for people, so that using it is akin to thumbing your nose at society’s ideas of what constitutes health

  • Your product helps retain values that are threatened by prevailing ones or pioneers new and revolutionary attitudes

  • Your product’s price is low to moderate


MARKETING APPROACH | Advocate for revolutionary change, despite social norms and popular opinions

TONE | Bold, Controversial, Disruptive, Polarizing, Straight-shooting, and Unfiltered

VALUE PROPOSITION | Helps people break the rules

CUSTOMER FEAR | Ineffectuality, impotence, powerlessness

 

OUTLAW MINDSET & TRAITS

GOAL | To challenge the status quo and to destroy what is not working in society

STRATEGY | To advocate change through an unconventional approach

MOTIVATION | Risk & Mastery

CALL | Feeling powerless, angry, mistreated, under siege

CORE DESIRE | Revenge or revolution

GIFT | Outrageousness, radical freedom

CHAMPIONS | Revolutionary, Individualism, Freedom, Unconventional, Desire for Justice

SUPER POWERS | Raising hell in the name of change, breaking the rules for the greater good, and embracing controversy

SHADOW | Criminal or evil behavior

TRAP | Taking their rebellious behavior too far, causing unnecessary destruction which may also lead to them being outcasts, isolated, and possibly crime

FEARS | Being powerless, trivialized, inconsequential

TURN-OFFS | Control freaks, Close-Mindedness, Being Silenced, Injustice, and Power Trips

 

LEVELS OF THE OUTLAW

LEVEL 1 Identifying as outsider, dissociating from the values of the group or society in a way that flies in the face of conventional behaviors and morality

LEVEL 2 Behaving in shocking or disruptive ways

LEVEL 3 Becoming a rebel or a revolutionary

 

SIMILAR BRAND ARCHETYPES


SOURCES

Mark, Margaret, Pearson, Carol, (2001). The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes Hardcover - (Amazon Affiliate Link) pages 13, 18, 123-124, 129, 139

The authors developed the 12 Brand Archetypes as a tool for marketing in 1995 and explained their methodology and ideas in their seminal book. Some of the content on this page are ideas cited directly to maintain correctness and some have been paraphrased where possible.