Harley-Davidson has shown superb marketing prowess in the motorcycling industry with some absolutely brilliant campaigns, but could someone tell me what the exec’s were thinking of with this one on the right?
I thought about calling them to say, “Hey Harley, Scientology telephoned and wanted to let you know the spaceship is on the way…long live Zenu!” after reading it.
Sure the Motor Company is a textbook business school case study for “lifestyle” marketing, but this advertisement at minimum shines a spotlight on age disparity, trophy-wife dysfunction (TWD) and connotes enticement to underage marriage (depending on the state). It’s a non-rational marketing decision to be sure. It harkens back to the AMF marketing days where motorcycle rebels cared more for role models than reliability and the bad memories of the “Harley-Davidson Cigarettes” campaign in 1992-1993. A miserable flop to be sure with several lawsuits leaving a bad taste (pun intended) in consumers mouth.
So, if I have this correct…we have a slightly weathered and bearded 50-something ‘boomer’… proclaiming that as a “quiet gray gentlemen” he would never let his under-18 aged wife ride his motorcycle until she turns of legal age. In this era of hyper-pedophile-mania there is nothing more classy than old men married to under-18 girls. I find the ad downright creepy to suggest that under-18 girls are looking to ‘hook-up’ with a 50-something boomer. This marketing doesn’t make sense even for boomers let alone as a way to reach-out to the youthful motorcycle riding demographic. The only thing I could imagine being worse is using it in a branding blitz during Child Abuse Prevention month or to post it on a billboard advertisement in Houston while the polygamy trials run through the court system! To be fair, this ad/photo has been circling online since ’08 and I’m not exactly sure where it ran in print. Let me know if you’ve seen it.
Last quarter when Harley-Davidson CEO Keith Wandell stated the company was investing in the brand I first thought this was some kind of ‘code word’ for more layoffs, but little did we know it meant CMO, Mark-Hans Richer was deep in the H-D branding lab, with his sleeves rolled up, hitting the marketing white board to improve the company image.
H-D likely spent hundreds of man hours building out the creative concepts for this advertisement. What’s next? I’ll save them some time and $$… I’m visualizing a multi-city billboard campaign with a “cougar” straddling a Dark Custom… a Glee club drop-out on the back holding on with the tag line… “I just added my first aftermarket accessory. I think his name is Billy.”
Time for a new marketing road Harley.
Photo courtesy of H-D and Flickr.
Northwest Harley Blog 
The marketing execs at Harley seem to know how to create viral marketing, and get folks to blog about Harley. It’s Harley after all, it’s not like it’s Home Depot.
@Steve – yep I’m guilty of writing about them for sure. Thanks for the comment and stopping by. BTW, great work on your web site/blog too! I’ve been looking at it for a while now and find the topics most interesting. Take care.
As much money and time that HD spends trying to Brand itself (frequently creating some laughably contradictory images along the way) – this output is embarrassing. If they were going for “Let’s make our riders look like statutory rapists,” or “desperate men unable to attract intelligent, grown women”… Bravo Zulu, HD!!!
Maybe the next ad can include a little child or spousal abuse imagery… woo-hoo!!! Can’t afford to leave those fellas off your marketing lists, can ya HD?
A little bit of me is holding out hope that the ad was created by a bored and talented photo-shopper and had nothing to do with HD, but I doubt it. HD should realize that ads like this may attract a few new idiots to their herd, but are likely to drive away many more current and future customers.
Re: Cougar Billboards – great idea, and there is a difference. Billy’s either gay (glee club after all) and should not be considered prey by the cougar; or if by some freak of nature he is straight, I’d think he’s the luckiest little punk this side of Milwaukee 🙂 Couldn’t say the same for the teenage girlfriend of the ZZ Top wanna-be in the ad.
Ride Safe