Brand Failures_ The Truth About the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time - Matt Haig [32]
What it’s really about with a Harley Davidson is the sound... everybody loves that rumble. Another thing Harley owners really crave about their bikes is the low-end torque, the raw power coming out of the gate. It runs out pretty quick once you get up past ninety miles an hour. Most Harley riders don’t care about high speed, they’d rather have that low-end torque, the one that gurgles down in your groin and gives you the feeling of power. The Japanese bikes, while they have the power, they don’t quite have the feeling of power.
The appeal of the Harley Davidson is essentially masculine and its customers take brand loyalty to extreme levels. Indeed, many testosterone-charged Harley owners even tattoo the Harley Davidson name and imagery onto their bodies.
The company has attempted to capitalize on this unique strength of feeling towards the brand, by pushing the Harley Davidson chain of shops selling a wide variety of branded merchandise – Harley Davidson T-shirts, socks, cigarette lighters and ornaments. While Harley Davidson’s core fans may have accused the company of ‘Disneyfying’ the brand, the real problem occurred when Harley Davidson attached its name to a range of aftershave and perfume. For lovers of the motorcycle, this was an extension too far. Harley Davidson had fallen into the trap of thinking that more products equals more sales. And it usually does, at least in the short term. But as Al and Laura Ries write in The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, this type of strategy can have negative consequences in the long term:
Do you build the brand today in order to move merchandise tomorrow? Or do you expand the brand today in order to move the goods today and see it decline tomorrow? [...]
Line extension, megabranding, variable pricing and a host of other sophisticated marketing techniques are being used to milk brands rather than build them. While milking may bring in easy money in the short term, in the long term it wears down the brand until it no longer stands for anything.
Ironically, though, this quest for more products and to broaden the Harley Davidson line went against the way the company had built the brand in the first place. In Hell’s Angel, Barger writes:
Harley has enjoyed a huge share of the large bike market for decades. They control about fifty percent of cruiser sales, with Japanese bikes making up the other half. As a result, they often act a little high and mighty toward their customers.
An official at Harley Davidson was once quoted as saying, ‘Enough bikes is too many, and if we make enough, we lose mystique.’ While they keep saying they’re building more and more each year, up until a couple of years ago I believe Harley Davidson intentionally held back production to stir up demand.
The implication is that Harley Davidson originally understood that its customers could have too much of a good thing. Not only had it stayed focused on motorbikes, but the company may have also limited their availability in order to generate the Harley Davidson ‘mystique’.
By the 1990s, however, the brand was clearly heading in the other direction. Alongside aftershave and perfume, the company also launched Harley Davidson wine coolers. As you would expect, the bikers were not impressed.
On her internet homepage, one biker girl, who calls herself ‘Tinker’, recounted her experience of seeing all these inappropriate items on sale in a Harley Davidson chain store:
Drifting closer, I found myself dazzled by the seemingly infinite variety of stuff. Man, they had everything under the sun! There were H-D socks, perfumes, infant clothes, an entire line of kids wear, tons of ornaments and collectables, even ties, all stamped with the official H-D license logo. Everything, from the truly nice to the frankly ugly, was on display. Everything that is except an actual Harley Davidson