The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes [Hardcover]

Margaret Mark (Author), Carol Pearson (Author), Carol S. Pearson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 16, 2001

A brand’s meaning—how it resonates in the public heart and mind—is a company’s most valuable competitive advantage. Yet, few companies really know how brand meaning works, how to manage it, and how to use brand meaning strategically. Written by best-selling author Carol S. Pearson (The Hero Within) and branding guru Margaret Mark, this groundbreaking book provides the illusive and compelling answer. Using studies drawn from the experiences of Nike, Marlboro, Ivory and other powerhouse brands, the authors show that the most successful brands are those that most effectively correspond to fundamental patterns in the unconscious mind known as archetypes. The book provides tools and strategies to:
• Implement a proven system for identifying the most appropriate and leverageable archetypes for any company and/or brand
• Harness the power of the archetype to align corporate strategy to sustain competitive advantage

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Pearson is the president of the Center for Archetypal Studies and Applications and the author of The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By (1998) and a coauthor of Magic at Work: Camelot, Creative Leadership, and Everyday Miracles (1995). Mark is a consultant specializing in business strategy and brand management. Pearson's work is based on Jungian psychology, which holds that archetypes are forms or images of a collective nature, which occur not only as myths but also as individual products of the unconscious. Using examples from advertising and marketing and consumer, popular, and organizational culture, she and Mark show that successful brands draw on responses to such archetypes as the hero, outlaw, lover, sage, magician, creator, and innocent, and that these responses cross lifestyle and cultural boundaries. They examine ways to determine which archetypal meaning is best for one's brand and provide a model for doing so. David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Using examples from advertising and marketing and consumer, popular, and organizational culture, Pearson and Mark show that successful brands draw on responses to such archetypes as the hero, outlaw, lover, sage, magician, creator, and innocent, and that these responses cross lifestyle and cultural boundaries. (Booklist 20010110)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1st edition (January 16, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071364153
• ISBN-13: 978-0071364157
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.3 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #68,423 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #18 in Books > Business & Investing > Marketing & Sales > Marketing > Product Management

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding brand power through archetypes March 21, 2001

By "ideafarm"

Format:Hardcover

For those marketers who have always had a secret predilection for using their intuition, who've harbored a belief in the hidden power of the right 'fit' in a message - The Hero and The Outlaw reads like a long, drawn-out ahhhhhhhh. Like scratching an itch. Like constant light bulbs going off in your brain, one after another. It drives to the central question behind all the 'buzz' about branding - in what exactly, and where exactly, resides the buried power of a brand? What is its hidden deep source? How come a brand 'pushes our buttons?'

The simple, graceful and very fitting answers are given by Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson in their new book The Hero and The Outlaw - Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes. When a brand taps into one of their twelve major archetypes, and does so in a way that feels right and appropriate, then the brand 'works.' Consumers respond, a channel of understanding is opened, the message is received.

The twelve archetypal categories which Pearson and Mark use for their analysis are: Creator, Caregiver, Ruler, Jester, Regular Guy/Gal, Lover, Hero, Outlaw, Magician, Innocent, Explorer, Sage. For instance: Williams-Sonoma is a 'creator' brand, and so is going to carry meaning and resonance for consumers who want to craft something new in their lives. Ivory Soap is the 'purest' example of the Innocent archetype. And if Nike is a Hero brand, you can be sure that the Harley-Davidson brand is an Outlaw archetype.

While all the right brain, intuitive marketers are delighted to consider such a workable and insightful way of thinking about branding, rest assured, their more left brain associates have not been 'left' behind. In an wonderfully holistic way, the archetypal wisdom of Jungian author Carol Pearson is met, like yin with yang, in the rigor, testing and real world measurements of Margaret Mark during her 16-year career at Young & Rubicam's senior levels. Like a one-two punch, Pearson and Mark support intuition with quantitative reason, and round out data with connected imagination.

I learned from this book. Advertisements look different to me now, and I can better perceive when a brand is being true to its self and effective in its message (and sometimes, I now know why). Pearson and Mark's idea that using archetypal patterns can be a more morally responsible way of branding, is a small but intriguing thought, offered almost parenthetically.

Very few business books lead me to what feels like an 'epiphany.' (Tom Peters' Search for Excellence did when I first read it in 1989; so did Sally Helgesen's The Female Advantage in 1990, and Margaret Wheatley's Leadership and the New Science a few years ago.) To me, this book feels as though it contains the same sort of breakthrough thinking, but in terms of how to communicate, with power, in an information-saturated world. I highly recommend it. [475 words]

Cathy Brillson ...the idea farmer

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36 of 47 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing September 13, 2007

By P. Marks

Format:Hardcover

I was disappointed by the lack of rigorous thinking in this book.

Sure, different companies have different personalities and personality is part of the brand. We could even create our own set of Jungian archetypical brand personalities, and go about attaching them to different brands.

But now for a test. Is Coca Cola a Creator -- helping inspire its users to do great bubbly things? Is it a Caregiver -- showing care for others? Maybe it's a Ruler -- a tough competitor and long the top dog in Cola Wars? How about a Jester -- always at the center of a good time? Or just it's just the drink for Regular Guys and Gals? Look at the ads -- maybe its a Lover or at least a drink for Lovers sharing a soda with two straws? Or, how about an almost Heroic presence, again from ads? Sometimes, it has a sort of Outlaw feel (with folks like Mean Joe Greene playing Robin Hood handing a Coke to a kid). In the old days Coca Cola ads praised it both for giving energy and a calming effect -- though there's no archetype for either of those. So, maybe it is more a Magician -- think of some of those magical ads past and animated present and its ability to give both energy and calm the soul. Given Coca Cola's global ubiquity and appeal, it might well be the drink of Explorers. It might even be (given the caffeine) the energy drink for yuppie Sages? Well, it turns out (according to the authors), that Coke is clearly so successful because it's an "Innocent." The toughest competitor in the Cola Wars, a mixture of caffeine, water, and sugar, almost wizened from a century of success -- yeah, it's clearly an Innocent and that explains everything.

My point is that the book lacks any sense of rigor, proof, or science-like basis in fact. The authors do a clever job of retrofitting achetypes to brands, and several of the cases are interesting, but the whole thing appears to work better in hindsight than proven principles for brand success. One could equally well, in this reviewers opinion, talk about aligning your brand with top-rated TV shows, Tarot cards, signs of the Zodiac, or (with at least a tiny bit of science) Myers-Briggs personality types --- "proving" the case with stories about how GE, Toyota, Google, etc. etc. all fit some stellar or personality pattern.

The kernel of truth in the book is that people like their brands, products, and companies to have a predicatable, attractive, and aspirational subtext. Creating an enduring and attractive personality makes sense, at least as long as the personality remains relevant.

Speaking of personalities, what's the Jungian archetype for the Maytag repair man? Is he a Regular Guy, sidekick to a Hero, or a Jester? Is the Ultimate Driving Machine (BMW) a Hero or an Explorer . . . with maybe the 3 Series for Regular Guys and Gals with higher aspirations than Honda and Toyota owners? No doubt the authors could tell us, though I doubt their hindsight would be of much value in predicting past or future business success.

What might be of value to some readers, especially those who think Jung had the last meaningful words on human decision making, is that some structure (almost any structure, even the Yellow Pages or TV guide) can be useful in brainstorming product and brand alternatives.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If Joseph Campbell was a copywriter... November 24, 2004

By Sean Trapani

Format:Hardcover

...he could not have written a more interesting treatise on the subject of branding. It is the single most interesting book on advertising that I have ever read.

(And I'm a bonafide nerd, folks...I've read plenty!)