Remember that outsider who kept Harley-Davidson on the road?
Keith E. Wandell (retired H-D CEO) grabbed the handlebars at the company in the heart of the economic crisis in 2009. Harley lost $55 million that year, as buying a motorcycle stopped being an option for many consumers.
Wandell made some big statements. “Don’t let Harley-Davidson become General Motors!” Look in a mirror, he told staff – Harley was already so far down that same path [as GM] “it wasn’t even funny.”
Wandell took bold action and made quick decisions to focused the company on doing what many say it does best: Making big, powerful, premium-priced cruisers.
Keith Wandell
Keep in mind, this was when the great recession and credit crisis sent shockwaves through Harley-Davidson. In less than one year, bike shipments dropped about 25 percent.
Wendell cut the workforce – at least 2,700 hourly workers and 840 administrative employees. The economy was in the tank, the motor company had a big union labor force and old manufacturing processes. People were just churning and everything was upside down at the company.
Imagine…
I’m not talking about celebrities’ filming themselves singing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, from their multi-acre estates and whining about their COVID-19 pandemic isolation. Never has disproportionate privilege been so apparent and I for one am really fed up with their self-serving need to be in the public spotlight with style-over-substance videos.
But, I digress…
Mark-Hans Richer
It is equally important to recall Wandell’s right-hand “stunt man” — you may remember him as that over-the-top marketing genius who had women screaming, grown men crying and Oprah jumping up and down, chanting: “Everybody gets a car!”
I’m talking about Mark-Hans Richer, who was Sr. VP, Chief Marketing Officer at Harley-Davidson, prior to his 2015 departure. Granted, Richer is currently employed at Fortune Brands, but with the mass exodus at Harley-Davidson and salary decreases across the executive staff it’s plausible to pull him back into the H-D team.
Richer, generated the most bankable kind of publicity: controversy. He made the difference between a motorcycle brand being a rock star versus more employees working in the rental lot.
He’s the charismatic dude that dropped a Dyna Super Glide on Pope Francis at the Vatican. Then turned around at a press briefing and said, I would be really upset if you felt our strategy was about “meeting the nicest people on a Harley” because I can tell you that ain’t the strategy. Later he pontificated that a Harley costs less than “another tattoo, a parking ticket, a gas station burrito, and a lip ring” in an appeal to what makes millennials tick. In 2002, he helped the company get named Company of the Year by Forbes magazine.
110th Anniversary Celebration
In a university commencement speech, he stated: “Everything I ever learned from business, I learned from Willie the Wildcat stuffed animal,” a business he started right out of college. Richer secured the first major worldwide sports sponsorship for Harley-Davidson at UFC and was instrumental in X-Games marketing.
No, I don’t have a man crush.
Richer was a key contributor of the “Ride Home” anniversary events. Do you remember when returning to the mecca of motorcycling in Milwaukee was truly an EVENT i.e. the 110th Anniversary festivities featured 60 bands, including Aerosmith, Kid Rock and ZZ Top. Remember that 3 ½-hour set by Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band at the 105th Anniversary? How about when Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl, committed a major sin on stage by cracking open a Coors in Miller Town?
100th Anniversary Celebration
There was the surprise headliner (Elton John) and outright disaster for the centennial anniversary. Musical highlights included Billy Idol, Kid Rock, Joan Jett, Poison, REO Speedwagon, the Doobie Brothers and Tim McGraw for the 100th anniversary so, people booing and walking out might have been overstated in the media.
Then came 2018 and time to celebrate 115 years of the open road. Harley-Davidson CMO, Heather Malenshek tells the media the event is all about returning to its roots with a focus on the motorcycle, not the entertainment. Huh?! It was an unmitigated flop for entertainment. She very quietly departs the company in October 2019. Coincidence?
Indian is challenging Harley’s cash cow, the Road Glide. BMW has market segment share in the ADV or “adventure motorcycle” sector and recently introduced the new R 18 touring, cruiser configuration to compete head-on with Harley-Davidson and Indian. Rumors started circulating recently that Honda is introducing a new 1100 Rebel to compete directly with Harley-Davidson.
Pan American
Harley needs more than anything a fast start for a new model to become a breakout hit. Is that the Pan American, ADV?
The ADV segment is crowded and entrenched with BMW, Honda, KTM, and newcomer Ducati, among others with decades, of dirt-tested refinement. Harley doesn’t have the luxury of burning up stacks of cash on a another “vanity project.”
The Milwaukee motor company has a very narrow window to establish that hit. Gone are the days when a slow seller can be nurtured into a hit. Here’s looking at you LiveWire and the “Field of Dreams” marketing of distressed or stigmatized merchandise! I truly wonder if acting president and CEO Jochen Zeitz or Harley-Davidson management really understand why the LiveWire product is failing?
It’s logically time to recall Mr. Wandell and “CMO head-honcho,” Richer back from spending their days taking lunch at the Polo Lounge and crank up the H-D buzz machine.
What the media’s hourly drumbeat of “panic porn” on the COVID-19 trauma has shown us, cannot be unseen. A motorcycle-less Los Angeles. Coyotes wandering on the empty Golden Gate Bridge. A quiet New York, where you can hear the birds chirp in the middle of Madison Avenue.
We’re in it. Stores are closed. Restaurants are empty. Streets and multi-lane freeways are barren. Body bags in tractor trailers. The Oregon beach is an eerie ghost town. The economy has collapsed and a devastated 22+ million Americans have lost their jobs in four weeks. It’s a dark feeling of rust, rot and ruin.
“Illegitimi non carborundum.” The Latin phrase loosely translates to, “Don’t let the [COVID] bastard get you down.”
Motorcycle enthusiasts are the ones who understand why dogs stick their heads out the window. In the famous words of a previous H-D CEO, Jeffrey Bleustein, “We (Harley) have to pretend ten fiery demons are chasing us at all times,” and “make the right bikes, at the right time, and get them to the right place!”
Let’s all take a deep breath and get ready for a potential Harley-Davidson tsunami. What is about to be unleashed will be the greatest campaign ever created to get you to feel normal again. Every brand will come to our rescue, dear consumer, to help take away that darkness and get life back to the way it was before the crisis.
The great American return to normal is coming and you won’t be able to ignore that deafening motorcycle exhaust noise.
Photos taken by author and courtesy of Harley-Davidson and Wikipedia.
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