By Mike McDaniel
There are some brands strongly identified with America, with American values and ideals and with American design and quality. They’re known and coveted around the world, prestige symbols here and abroad. That’s why it’s so dumbfounding when the makers of those profitable, iconic, products do incredibly stupid things to fix what isn’t broken.
Remember “New Coke?” “Crystal Pepsi?” Those dimwitted marketing stunts were pre-woke, pushed by people who thought they knew better than Americans what Americans wanted.
In the woke era in which we currently suffer, the most notorious example of marketing dimwittery is Budweiser’s abortive association with trans Tinkerbell Dylan Mulvaney. Not only did a newly minted marketing executive think that a good idea, she also insulted Bud’s customer base, telling them, in essence, they‘d better get with the woke program or be left behind. That bit of legendary marketing brilliance cost Anheuser-Busch nearly $7 billion in market capitalization virtually overnight, and knocked Bud Lite out of its top spot, a blow from which it has never recovered.
Bud struggled mightily to recover, firing the hapless customer insulter, and trotting out a variety of weak apologies. They tried to distance themselves from Mulvaney by teaming up with Harley Davidson:
They even had an expensive booth at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, that mecca of Harley culture. The bikers wouldn’t come within a mile of the booth; Bud couldn’t give away Bud Lite.
Amazingly, a number of other famous American brands, brands closely associated with traditional American values like hard work and patriotism, jumped on the woke bandwagon, brands like Tractor Supply, which hastily abandoned their woke lunacy, and John Deere—John Deere?!—which is still trying to figure out how much money and market share it wants to lose before reversing to sanity.
But the most bizarre example of an iconic American company flaunting its wokeness is… Harley Davidson?! Yes, that Harley Davidson.
It’s inexplicable. Harley owners have long been faithful to Harley, even when there was little to be faithful about. There were long stretches when Harleys were reasonably good machines, but not very good motorcycles, and other stretches when if a motorcycle was broken down at the roadside, it was a 99% certainty it was a Harley. Harleys have never been inexpensive. Yet through all that, Harley owners stuck to their brand and wouldn’t ride foreign-made motorcycles.
Their faithfulness was eventually rewarded. Harleys became much more reliable, retaining their big, rumbling V-twin character, while expanding into an ever-increasing model line of good, reliable, attractive motorcycles that met nearly every motorcycling need and look. For anyone wanting to buy American, Harley was the choice, though Indian has been making some inroads into that demographic. Harley was the all-American motorcycle, the mount of the proudly patriotic–American Iron–a motorcycle like no other.
And then, in 2020, Harley hired as CEO a German, one Jochen Zeitz.
In a video just made infamous on Wednesday by Robby Starbuck, Harley-Davidson president, CEO, and Chairman Jochen Zeitz says he became the “Taliban” when he became a board member and says his job is to “take on capitalism and redefine it.”
“It’s important that we create new leadership,” Zeitz said, “that we get others to join a new thinking of a more sustainable business, of a better business that is more equitable in every respect. Socially, environmentally, and financially.”
What could Harley possibly have been thinking? Its CEO associated Harley Davidson with the Taliban? He also wants all Harleys to be electric by 2030. That’ll please Harley riders who cherish the sound, feel and look of their bikes, the sound, feel and look that makes a Harley a Harley, known around the world.
David “Iowahawk” Burge, a man who knows more about American car culture than almost anyone else you’re likely to meet, just called it the “Possibly single most hilarious corporate self-immolation of all time.”
At this year’s Sturgis Rally, Zeitz was, to put it mildly, unpopular:
“It’s branding suicide,” Vinny Terranova, the owner of Pappy’s Vintage Cycles in Sturgis, South Dakota, told Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
“A lot of bikers are switching over to Indian,” he said. “They killed Harley. It breaks my heart.”
Maybe Harley is only “mostly dead?”
“A Harley valued at $30,000 just a few years ago is now getting only $4,000,” said Terranova.
Could it be worse? It’s worse:
Some long-time Harley riders are saying on social media that they’re ditching their bikes for new brands with their next purchase; others are removing the Harley-Davidson name from their motorcycles.
Zeitz knows just what he’s doing, and that could bankrupt Harley, Harley dealers, the supply chain and which may give new meaning to: “get woke; go broke.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/08/harley_davidson_goes_woke.html