A week earlier, the NYT went hog-wild, bashing H-D’s growth prospects as deader than a Baby Boomer’s 401-K. Freelancer Susanna Hamner wrote that H-D’s core customers are “aging Baby Boomers” who aren’t in the mood during these depressing times to shell out $20,000 or so for “something that is basically a big toy.” You can bet Hamner never told a burly leather-clad and tattooed Harley guy that he was riding a toy. Hamner surmised that H-D’s “longtime strategy of marketing to the Boomers, which was a blazing success, is now backfiring.” The Times put a snippy “Harley, You’re Not Getting Any Younger” headline on Hamner’s hammer job.
The obit is way premature. H-D earned $654M in 2008 (albeit down from $934M in '07) on $5.6B in revenues. Detroit’s Troubled Trio can only dream of earnings like Harley’s.
H-D spokesperson Bob Klein ripped the NYT’s piece as one that “significantly mischaracterized the strength of our brand and what we are doing with our young adult outreach programs.” He told H-D’s hometown Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the motorcycle company didn’t run the Sunday NYT ad “by accident.”
The ad revels in H-D’s tough guy image. Its bikers don’t cower or succumb to fear in hard economic times, rather they “seize the throttle and give it a fearless twist forward.” Wrapping itself in the American flag, H-D sees “American companies and good old American ingenuity wrenching the life back into this economy of ours.” Blue collar, white collar, pink collar and no collar Harley riders are the ones who are going get the economy back on track, according to the ad, which ends with “Screw it. Let’s Ride.”
The Harley Owners Group counts more than one million members. The Times used to have a circulation that surpassed that number. Who will be around five years from now? Will it be the H-D and its HOG or the printed “Old Grey Lady?”
Ride on, Harley!