A brand reading
Harley-Davidson.
Outlaw Refusal as identity.
Harley sold motorcycles for decades, but what it actually sold was permission to refuse. The rallies, the chrome, the founder’s-day rituals: the whole apparatus is a working theatre of opting out of the version of life the customer normally lives.
The reading.
Outlaw with an Everyman counterweight, expressed.
- Character
- Outlaw
- Drive
- Freedom, change, justice, independence, revenge.
- Fear
- Captivity, conformity, complacency, subjection, dependence.
- Strategy
- Act as an agent of change, and let people break with convention.
- Counterweight
- Everyman
- Opportunity
- Motorcycles were transport. Refusal was a lane no one owned.
- Diagnostic
- Expressed
The Outlaw as identity. Harley sells permission to refuse the life the customer normally lives, and the rallies make the refusal a shared ritual. The Everyman counterweight is the brotherhood around the fire.
Famous spot
Live by It, 2018