It is rather strange HD picked now to join a sinking ship of Bud Light.
chances are good that this was in planning and production for a year
When you think about the discussions they had to have, the contracts drawn up, reviewed by lawyers, people hired, scripts made, filming to begin...
All that doesn’t happen in a month. And I doubt they would have STARTED after this disaster.
HD is about to commit suicide. Enjoy the woke.
HD is going to take a huge anal hit.
Harley Davidson isn’t going to get their stock crashed for this.
A motorcycle purchase is not a beer purchase.
Beer is a consumable commodity… millions, if not tens of millions of beers are bought daily. You buy it, you drink it, you buy another one.
HD sells less than 200k motorcycles worldwide annually.
Beers are bought a one to a few a day by each consumer. Motorcycles? Maybe a few over the course of their lifetime.
Beer has hundreds of brands to choose from, motorcycles, without getting into the custom or boutique builders there are maybe 10ish brands of note
HD is the brand people who want an American roadster many people aspire to own….
If HD put a trans on a bike in their direct advertising and said we are here for the queer then, you would see that mystique be affected, but letting Bud put your brand on their can? This isn’t going to cause folks by any large number to abandon their brand and stop buying their motorcycles.
Perhaps they will get their ESG score dinged by proxy and that could force some institutional ESG funds to have to liquidate the stock, which might creat a short term drop, but from a fundamentals perspective no I wouldn’t be worried if I owned HD stock unless I was day trading it over this.
HD had its lowest sales in 15 years last year, and given the continued inflation and recession fears I would be more worried about that impact on the stock long term. motorcycles are not a necessity item for the majority of consumers, the tighter house budgets are the less the desire to have a bike is likely to be able to be acted on.
Yes the hard core will still buy a motorcycle when they need a new one, but the other 90%+ of the customer base will hold off doing so.
This will make for an interesting set of tattoos
Harley sales are probably dropping. Everyone who wants a Harley already has one.
The love I have had for HD for 60 years and the Road King I have sitting in my garage just turned very bitter in my mind. I also have my first bike, a ‘46 74 cu. in. sitting next to the Road King. Harley drivers are the very last individuals on earth to sign on to wokism, which says those running the company are brain dead. The suicidal ideologues just will not leave well enough alone.
Companies / advertisers are going after the younger market. sad
But....the Problem is, I think for the most, part younger people are into cell phones more than motorcycles. Most of us riders, I notice, are now gray heads.
Is it true that with this spiral HD will change the brand name to Hardly-Davvieson, the woke bikie??????
It is really about capturing kids when they become adults and start spending. There is a long list of brands dying because Gen Z is ignoring them. NASCAR, Budweiser, Harley, NHRA, Pizza Hut, numerous retailers, etc. This generation is not being influenced by real things they can see, smell and touch; like falling in love with racing and the smell of ethanol. Gen Z is synthetic. Influenced by what they see and hear on their phones. They are the first generation to grow up in the post-truth world.
HD has a much bigger problem than light beer marketing. That 45-degree long-stroke V -twin engine they use was a bad idea fore an engine 100 years ago and they’ve never really changed or upgraded it that much.
“Veteran Biker” who claims to have such an influence on the world that he can sink stock prices at will, had forgotten that Harley Davidson had never met a flat surface it didn’t want its logo emblazoned upon.
HD needs to sell to a different generation of customers. The ones I see now are older men 60/70 riding that yellow line hanging their head over into my lane. We have several deaths per year in western NC mountains just run head on to oncoming traffic. The rice burner riders are in their own lane. I just don’t know why HD drivers think they own both lanes. I often wonder if these guys are the same guys I used to see in the 70’s when I rode my Yamaha. I was in my 20’s and most of them were also. I don’t see how they have lasted so long.