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Harley-Davidson
There’s only one brand potent enough to inspire someone to tattoo its
logo on his or her body—Harley-Davidson.
Founded in 1903, the company is revered by nonriders and motorcycle enthusiasts around the
world. Harley-Davidson isn’t just a lifestyle: For many, it is life, or at least the fun part.
But as much as customers benefit from the company and its products and services, Harley-
Davidson may well have benefited more from them. The company owes its very survival to the
loyalty of its customers. In the 1970s, AMF, a sporting-goods conglomerate that sold everything from
golf balls to motorcycles, owned Harley-Davidson. During that time, the brand didn’t receive much
individualized attention; as a result, quality and sales faltered. At the same time, lower-priced,
better-quality Japanese motorcycles were flooding the market. The brand was facing a very real crisis.
Through it all, Harley fans remained true. The brand was finally back in capable hands when a team
led by Vaughn Beahls and Willie H. Davidson bought the company in 1981.These two, among others,
helped revitalize the enterprise and later took it public in 1985. Since then, with the unwavering sup-
port of employees and stockholders, Harley-Davidson now claims status as one of the world’s most
admired companies, with unheralded customer satisfaction.
The Harley-Davidson 2000 desk
calendar, published by Chronicle
Books, was one of the first exam-
ples of a true retail product created
out of the rich H-D archives. One of
its most successful Chronicle titles
for 2000, the complete run of the
calendar sold out.
Eagle Thon is one in a series of
limited-edition posters given away
at a Harley-Davidson open-house
event that benefited a charitable
organization.
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VSA Partners of Chicago has helped the
company reestablish itself from the
beginning of that turnaround. As Harley
has grown, so has VSA, from a three-
person traditional design studio to a
seventy-five person strategic and inte-
grated marketing firm. Partner Dana
Arnett says the two companies have
learned plenty from each other—about
branding, about business, about the
company’s cultural physiology. Today,
VSA helps create everything from
Harley’s Web site and annual report to
rider-education programs and a new
Harley-Davidson museum, scheduled
to open in Milwaukee in 2002.
When someone buys a Harley, he or
she isn’t just buying a product, says
Arnett, who is an enthusiastic rider
himself (as are a number of other peo-
ple in his office). Fellowship and cama-
raderie are also part of the package. When someone visits a store or dealer for parts or service, they
are also there for a free cup of coffee and some square talk. For that reason, the company spends
more on maintaining customer touch points, including rallies, rides, dealership events, and club
activities, than it does on advertising to the masses. Harley does not embrace the commodity mind-
set in producing its bikes, nor does it use a scattershot approach in promoting itself: Its product and
message simply are not for everyone.
“They look at every customer and cultural touch point as another way to heighten the experience that
brings you closer to the brand. Nothing gets you under the ether better than being right there with
your customer,” Arnett says.
All design and marketing is produced with what Arnett calls the “voice of truth,” to match the way
the company has always dealt with customers. “They have a strong brand with involved customers
that are impassioned and empowered by just about everything the company does. You have to give
it to them straight, because they spot a rat a mile away.”
The brand has always enjoyed a rebel image—but that’s only one of the many qualities that compa-
ny officials want to preserve. They know from the experience that this brand has a far broader reach
and appeal when it comes to individuality and lifestyle. Until recently, motorcycling was seen as a
very narrow consumer category. Today, Harley is proud to be producing its well-designed, powerful
machines and products for customers from all walks of life.
VSA stepped carefully in the beginning, working to leverage existing equity. Even today they strive
to enhance the brand, not change it. “If you embellish the brand too much, you infect it,” Arnett
explains. So everything the design team creates must work more as a canvas for the rich photog-
raphy, typography, and even the paper used in the final artifact.
By examining the core appeal of the brand, Harley and VSA strive to distill specific attributes.
Heritage, freedom, and passion are just a few words that logically explain what’s at the heart of
these expressions. These more positive and emblematic attributes are often played out in visual and
typographic messages; they shine through in just about all of the Harley-Davidson advertising and
marketing mediums.
Another Chronicle issue, Lore, was
a chronology of the first fifty years
of Harley-Davidson. Images and sto-
ries capture the spirit of significant
events in the company’s history.
(Lore II will be released shortly.)
The book is designed like a fine-art
book, with plates. The cover displays
an engraved steel plate, a direct
tactile and visual reference to the
motorcycle’s primary substrate.
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Other visual and cultural elements are givens, even to the neophyte: chrome and leather,
for instance, or specific models of bikes. VSA has transformed these long-familiar and
potentially trite conventions from old to classic. But classic isn’t the only voice of the
brand. Arnett says his office is hard at work on the contemporary image as well.
“We naturally play close attention to the heritage of the brand—but I think it would be
fair to say that our best work has a contemporary voice with a classic undertone. The
trick is in the subtle way one learns to move in and around the brand,” Arnett says.
Harley-Davidson invests a great deal of time and attention, he adds, on mapping con-
sumer trends and researching all demographic and lifestyle influences. In order to be
one of the world’s leading brands, the company must always be thinking many years out.
Arnett feels that Harley-Davidson’s success goes back to how well it has stayed in
touch with customers. “While motorcycles are core to the brand, the real success of
Harley-Davidson has come because they are so customer-minded. “They are very in
tune with what’s essential in creating a fulfilling customer experience,” he says. It’s his
firm’s job not only to continue to present fresh work but also to constantly develop new
marketing methods that stay in touch with this
customer-centric mindset. For example, at this
writing, they were working on a new strategy for
selling parts and accessories. Thoroughly
immersed in the brand, the design team is able
to anticipate and address the client’s needs.
In a sense, VSA’s mission is the same as Harley-
Davidson’s company mission statement, which
reads, in part, “We fulfill dreams.”
Harley-Davidson catalogs aren’t mere sales tools:
They are also meant to educate and inspire. VSA
works to constantly elevate the subject matter
through imagery and text.
Art and Science is the title of Harley-Davidson’s 1998 annual
report, the 12th that VSA Partners has created for its client.
The report took a classical/historical look back at moments
that still ring true in terms of how customers are inspired
through the brand. VSA commissioned fine artist Tom Fritz to
create the art for the book. Hand-signed prints of the work
were offered in the report: Approximately thirty thousand
were sold and the money was donated to charity. “We are not
looking at an annual report as a standard reporting tool,” says
VSA principal Dana Arnett. “This is very much an opportunity
to generate interest and inspire people.”
This postcard set (published by Chronicle Books) is a gift
item created from archival H-D images.
CREDITS
ALL WORK BY VSA PARTNERS—SPECIFICALLY, KEN FOX, MICHAEL PETERSON,
MELISSA WATERS, JASON EPAWLY, ROB HICKS, RON BERKHEIMER
172 173
THE LITTLE BOOK OF BIG PACKAGING IDEAS
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More Harley-Davidson catalogs and
screens from the company’s web
site: Every piece that VSA creates
is replete with the romance of
the brand.
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