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THE OUTLAW

Rules are meant to be broken.

The Outlaw delights in disruption and craves release from mainstream values and taboos. They revel in shocking, disturbing, and generally violating propriety. The Outlaw is driven to rebel against injustice and powerlessness by destroying or attacking whatever is not working for them.

 

While this brand should come with a warning sticker because of the extremes of shadow side - evoking anger, violence, and even death - it should not be dismissed as pure dark side. While some archetypes like the Hero have a conceivably unwarranted positive bias, the Outlaw has the opposite. Outlaw culture can not only act as a healthy release valve but gives us leave to question toxic assumptions.

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

OUTLAW BRANDS

The Outlaw is a good identity for brands 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 or service upsets the status quo.

  • Your product empowers the disenfranchised.

Outlaw Mindset

DESIRE: Disruption, Revenge or revolution, freedom from mainstream values and convention

GOAL: To destroy what is not working

GIFT: Outrageousness, freedom

CALL: Injustice, powerlessness, feeling mistreated or attacked

ENJOYS: Getting away with things; violating propriety, to shock or disturb

FEAR: Powerlessness, being trivialized or inconsequential

SHADOW: Going to the dark side, criminality

Levels of the Outlaw

Level 1: Identifying as an outsider, developing unconventional values and behaviors

Level 2: Shocking or disruptive behavior

Level 3: Becoming a rebel or revolutionary

SIMILAR ARCHETYPES

Gatorade Logo

The Hero

Motto: Where there’s a will, there’s a way

Core Motivating Desire: To prove oneself through achievement, to rescue, to triumph.

pepsi logo

The Jester

Motto: If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.

Core Motivating Desire: To have a great time and lighten up the world.

Disney logo

The Magician

Motto: It can happen.

Core Motivating Desire: To make dreams come true by understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe.

THE 12 BRAND ARCHETYPES

Chart of the 12 Brand Archetypes

The 12 Brand Archetypes were developed by Carol Pearson and Margaret Mark as a system for consistently creating stronger and more meaningful brands. The content on this site has been paraphrased where possible, and cited directly where needed to maintain accuracy.

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