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
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.