Harley-Davidson Talks Tough in the New York Times

Here’s an update on the recent struggles at Harley-Davidson, an American icon based in our hometown. Harley’s sales may have tumbled lately—and whose haven’t?—but the brand is still showing some mettle, as a recent dustup with The New York Times demonstrates.

A week or so ago, the NYT ran a piece headlined “Harley, You’re Not Getting Any Older.” It wasn’t a hatchet job by any stretch. But it did paint the future in dark colors, emphasizing the usual criticism that Harley’s core customers, baby boomers, won’t be in the market forever, and so the company needs to find a way to lure new blood.

Well, some people at Harley didn’t think they got a fair shake in the article. So, a few days later, they ran a big ad in an American flag design, with the provocative headline “You can file our obituary where the sun don’t shine.” You can read more about Harley’s advertising response here.

Now, you can say what you want about the logic of responding to a piece of journalism you disagree with by buying ad space in the publication that ran it. You also might take issue with the ad’s tone. Something about the in-your-face, red-white-and-blue attitude plays like 1987. In other words, the ad may appeal mostly to the baby boomer audience Harley needs to reach beyond.

Nevertheless, our local bike maker has a good point. As we’ve noted before, the company has been making moves and trying new things to cultivate new fans. These things take time, especially for a brand as well established as Harley’s is.

In the meantime, this playful advertising volley has earned plenty of additional coverage and conversation. And at its heart, the message is true to the rebellious, resilient image. On balance, that’s surely a win.

Stay True to Your Brand in Everything You Do

In the Internet Age, Keeping Promises Has Never Been More Important

Fifteen years ago, during my education in Total Quality Management, I was taught that satisfied customers generally tell two to four others that they’re satisfied, while dissatisfied customers tell, on average, seven others that they’re dissatisfied.

Fast-forward to the Internet Age. The avenues for an unhappy customer’s message to spread—and spread quickly—are much more plentiful. You’ve got to keep your promises, or you risk word getting around on the World Wide Web.

The record-keeper for our company’s 401(k) Plan might have done well to consider this new reality before they let our employees down. I won’t go into the specifics here, but let’s just say Associates in Excellence didn’t live up to its name.

My antennae begin wiggling whenever I confront a business that uses superlatives in their name—excellence, premier, perfect, etc. Definitions of “excellence” vary person to person. Therefore, in order for Associates in Excellence to be consistently “excellent,” every one of their products, services, transactions and interactions need to meet not only my definition of “excellence,” but everyone else’s, too. Absent that, they will not be “excellent”; they will disappoint.

If you’d like further details on the substandard service we experienced from Associates in, ahem, “Excellence,” I’d be happy to share them with you over email.

Do You Uphold Your Brand?

Take a moment to contemplate what your name stands for. What is YOUR brand promise? Compare that to what your every-day interactions demonstrate. Do they support the promise? At Scheibel Halaska, we believe powerful brands are always built from the inside out. Any inconsistency between what you say and how you act betrays your brand and, ultimately, your success.

1 Million Ways to Succeed

I recently took the opportunity at the Wisconsin Business & Technology Expo (sponsored by the Small Business Times) to hear Matthew May, senior advisor to the University of Toyota, offer insights from his new book, The Elegant Solution: Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation.

As Toyota surpasses GM as the #1 U.S. automaker, we should all take note that Toyota implements one million new ideas a year. I’ll repeat: 1,000,000 new ideas! That’s an average of about 2,740 innovations every day!

There are a couple of key factors behind this astonishing success that are worth repeating:

• Toyota’s people – every day, everywhere, throughout the organization – are looking for problems they can solve. Management doesn’t block them, but actively encourages these efforts. By recognizing that perfection is a pursuit and not a goal, they accept the fact that small failures (or skinning your knees as we call it at SH) are a natural part of the process.

• Innovation The Toyota Way focuses on smaller, easy-to-implement ideas that, believe it or not, “respect the box.” In fact, “swinging for the fences” is something Toyota avoids like the plague. They reason that they can’t afford high strikeout rates in today’s highly competitive market. They also know that working within the system is important until it’s time for a new box. There’s a rhythm to change and innovation that has to fit.

May challenges business leaders to understand that innovation is not as much about new technologies as it is about opportunity and impact. We not only should expect good ideas to come from anywhere in our organization, we should also demand and reward it. In doing so, we’ll unleash the full potential of our organizations. In not doing so, we can expect the Toyotas of this world to pass us by.

Yikes! I’ve Been WOMM’ed (or Have I)?

Yes, even executives of marketing firms can be the unsuspecting “victims” of novel marketing communication initiatives.

If you Google “word of mouth marketing”, you’ll get almost 1.3 million items selected. I was surprised to find out that there actually is a Word of Mouth Marketing professional trade association that I can join called WOMMA, that there are numerous articles being written about this "powerful" tactic (including the Washington Post), and that I can start practicing it tomorrow after I learn about the “five easy steps” of this practice, thanks to the article posted at marketingprofs.com.

Maybe its me, or the combination of too many years and too little non-gray hair left on my head, but my skeptical-brain alarm always starts beeping whenever I am advised about something that someone claims is so revolutionary that over one million “Google hits” already exist about the concept. It’s probably a little of both.

In situations like these, I like to do a little more research and reflecting.

First, what actually is “word of mouth marketing”? When I went to Wikipedia, I found that on Monday, December 18, 2006, at approximately 3:30 PM CST, the "definition of word of mouth, aka Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM)” is:

the passing of information by verbal means, especially recommendations, but also general information, in an informal, person-to-person manner, rather than by mass media advertising, organized publication, or traditional marketing. Word of mouth is typically considered a spoken communication, although web dialogue, such as blogs, message boards and emails are often now included in the definition.

There is some overlap in meaning between word of mouth and the following: rumour, gossip, innuendo, and hearsay; however the negative connotations of these words are not included in the meaning of word of mouth.

Hmmmm, very interesting!

I work for a professional services firm, and we have several professional services firms as clients. Professional services organizations are notorious for leveraging the recognition of the high quality of their services and their people into their networking efforts, thereby increasing their capacity to obtain referrals for new clients from others who are already impressed with/satisfied by the services provided by their firms. This has been a standard marketing practice for these types of firms for decades.

Back in the early 1990’s, when “Total Quality Management (TQM)” was all the rage, I remember being advised that satisfied clients, on average, tell four others that they are satisfied, dissatisfied clients, on average, tell seven others that they are dissatisfied, and clients who are dissatisfied, but who have their problems resolved by you in a proactive manner, speak your virtues to, on average, nine others. Moral of the statistics: create a way for your satisfied clients to acknowledge their satisfaction, proactively identify which of your clients are dissatisfied, find out why they're dissatisfied, and fix it quickly.

Eighteen months ago, I began looking for an organization that could help me be a better CEO of a company. A mentor of mine referred me to an organization called TEC - The Executive Committee. I met with one of their chairs, sat in on one of their meetings, and spoke with another business leader (and TEC member) whose opinion I respect. The end result was I immediately joined a TEC group; I highly recommend TEC to whoever is reading this posting (hopefully more than four people!).

It now appears to me that there is the distinct possibility that WOMM is actually the early-21st century version of TQMM (Total Quality Marketing Management), with a pinch of referral-based marketing thrown in. On the other hand, I just might be the early-21st century incarnation of the former leader of the United States Patent Office who, in the late-1800’s, recommended that that organization be disbanded because anything that could be invented had been invented already.