Just because a brand can be extended, doesn’t necessarily mean it will succeed against first-move competition, supplier relationships, scale economies etc…

Cheers

Gabriel Rossi- Brazil

It’s easy for me to accept deep Harley resonance with customers to the extent that those customers want to incorporate aspects of the brand into their birthday celebrations (to use the current example). But it’s less easy for me to accept that Harley Davidson therefore *should* manufacture such products (or allow them to be manufactured).

There must be some point past which the brand, through attempts to speak to the deeply felt values of its customers, begins to actually challenge those values. Doesn’t the domesticity implied by cake baking challenge the freedom embodied by the Harley brand?

So here’s the question I see at the heart of this discussion: At what point in a brand’s extension or evolution (They’re different, but both feed the question) does the brand begin to break apart, to lose its deeply felt meaning?

I don’t question the richness of the Harley brand and the deep emotional connection that owners have with it — but that isn’t the same thing as having a deep brand identity — one that we can and want to peel back the layers of (which extensions should do) — I would argue it doesn’t.

plus, Matt Kirkland has articulated an important point — extension vs. evolution — Harley COULD evolve to a different identity, but given that it’s had the same one for 100+ years, I doubt it would and I don’t think it should — so the question is whether its current identity supports extensions — and here again I would argue it doesn’t.

I love this dialogue — I’m learning so much and I really appreciate hearing from you — please keep the comments coming!

Several years ago I sat in on a presentation by a Harley marketing exec. He showed us focus group film which completely changed my view of the Harley brand. The subjects were a group of hard core bikers, flesh versions of the biker stereotype. Their task was to cut out images from magazines and assemble a collage depicting what their Harley means to them. The presentations were incredible! Nearly every biker had images depicting freedom (doves, open landscapes), independence, and other concepts that I would have never associated with the Harley brand. For this group, the Harley brand could extend into other products/services serving the same deep needs.

This is properly germane to the Harley discussion. The infamous cake decorating kit would be a change, rather than an outgrowth, of the Harley brand.* Denise isn’t asking, “is the Harley brand carved in stone,” but can the Harley brand grow to embrace more nuanced meanings while retaining its very established core?

Denise, am I following you correctly? Am I off the mark?

*I’ll keep my lips sealed about strong-selling Harley scrapbooking products.

HD is a lifestyle brand, attracting people who share a certain passion. If any brand could take their audience into new territory, they would seem to have an edge. Remember the case of Caterpillar who moved their brand from heavy duty earth moving equipment into mens apparel with great success.

Enjoyed your article and Joe Pine’s response about Harley. Good idea to gather more ideas and here is mine. The issue of keeping brands in their categories is not the right issue in my view. Categories, like brands themselves, shift with the meanings that consumers and other stakeholders give to them. While a Harley cake decorating kit might not work right now, who is to say what the future may hold? One way to test an idea like this one would be to ask, not whether cake decorating is a Harley-like activity, but what sort of cake decorating kit would Harley make? My point is not that I think Harley should get into cake decorating kits but rather that I don’t think category thinking works all that well. Being imaginative with brands sometimes means crossing category boundaries that do not immediately appear obvious and brands demand incessant creative thinking.

Mary Jo Hatch
Co-author of Taking Brand Initiative: How to Align Strategy, Culture and Identity Through Corporate Branding (Jossey-Bass/Wiley 2008)