Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [108]
Harley-Davidson: Emphasizing Freedom and Independence
Perhaps no other iconic product or brand has been marketed as well as and has increased in influence with the advent of the Internet as much as Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Beyond selling motorcycles, Harley-Davidson has captured the American spirit by selling freedom. By this simple emotional draw, Harley-Davidson is able to sell cross-culture, cross-demographic, and cross-socioeconomic boundaries and signify the same intangible emotional draw to each segment of its audience.
Freedom, especially grounded as the American ideal, is captured so well in the marketing of Harley-Davidson and is reinforced throughout the marketing of the brand. With stores across the United States, factory tours, Harley Owners’ Groups (HOGs), and rallies around the world, the riders of Harley-Davidson identify strongly with the spirit of independence and freedom. The content on the website and the online marketing reinforce this attitude (see Figure 10-7). Toughness and freedom shadow the content, the calls to action, and the camaraderie that one will find as a Harley-Davidson owner.
By creating communities of riders, Harley-Davidson is able to reinforce the “freedom of the open road” mentality, and the website offers much more than the bikes themselves. There are trip maps made especially for motorcycles, along with insider tips and local dealers noted on the map for service or parts along the way. The interactive trip planner becomes a resource beyond the initial sale that simply helps to extend the brand into the emotion of the community.
By providing dealer shops, factory tours, rewards at Best Western, and photo galleries, recognizing the custom styles of different riders; and focusing on groups such as women, Latinos, veterans, and military, Harley-Davidson brings together different groups for a singular interaction, not just with the brand but with the ideal. Everything aligns with the brand, which just happens to be part of the more powerful, larger emotional draw of freedom and independence.
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Figure 10-7: (a) The Harley-Davidson website associates emotion with the product. (b) Even in promoting factory tours; it recognizes the spirit of independence and freedom.
Creative Memories: Focusing on Fond Memories
Having been introduced to this product by the hoards of local crafters and scrapbookers, this was an easy emotional proof to spot (Figure 10-8). Scrapbooking is not about buying photo cutters, about buying line-free paper, or about buying all of the supplies (of which there are many). Scrapbooking is about memories—reliving, rediscovering, organizing, and displaying the memories from photos buried in shoeboxes.
Figure 10-8: Creative Memories is about telling your story with your photos and keeping memories alive.
In the literature, the products are not presented as products but rather as aids for your creativity in documenting a story. After all, who wouldn’t be more creative when using photo sorters, cropping, and photo-mounting tools. These aren’t positioned as typical scrapbooking commodities; they are keys to inspiration for unusual shapes, arrangements, and color schemes.
When reading the company literature and the recruitment for sales representatives and for home shows, the narrative of the company continues to concentrate on stories. The company has a story, every person has their own unique story, and both the company and its products are simply vehicles to allow you to communicate your story more effectively.
The emotional plea is to save memories. By focusing on the emotional value of saving and telling stories, it focuses on a very deep-seated emotion within the human race—remembering those who went on before and passing stories to the next generations. By providing the tools to enhance those memories and stories, Creative Memories taps into our hardwired human nature to recount stories through generations of oral tradition that will be generated by a new way