Tag: Digital

Our research found that while mil­len­ni­als were in tune with Harley’s brand val­ues, they did not asso­ciate them­selves with Harley’s inter­pre­ta­tion of their own val­ues. For exam­ple, mil­len­ni­als found val­ue in a sense of Broth­er­hood, a core Harley David­son val­ue, but their inter­pre­ta­tion of broth­er­hood dif­fered great­ly from Harley.

Con­se­quent­ly, we iden­ti­fied anal­o­gous com­pa­nies that did fit the mil­len­ni­al frame­work of Harley’s val­ues. Anoth­er key insight was the high bar­ri­er to engage­ment with the Harley-David­son brand. The only way to engage the brand was to own a motorcycle.

How­ev­er, mil­len­ni­als aren’t ready to dive in head first into an unfa­mil­iar brand, par­tic­u­lar­ly one with the stig­ma of Harley. The brands that appealed to mil­len­ni­als the most were the ones that allowed them to ini­tial­ly engage with very low com­mit­ment, expand upon that engage­ment, and then final­ly become a brand ambas­sador through a step­wise process.