Building a Brand Community on the Harley Posse Ride

Why or why not? $100,000.00 budget (Posse Ride II), is a good price for value comparing to other alternatives to advertise and build communities; The â€Å"Posse Ride† is probably the most important MKT instrument to build and preserve internal aspect of Harley-Davidson product regarding its brand; The product’s meaning of adventure, freedom and even rebellious, works like a relief for the life responsibilities for its members; For human beings gregarious aspects are important and people have the necessity to belong to groups.What role should the Posse Ride play in the HOG events mix? â€Å"Posse Ride† is the main instrument to connect company to the customers and to build the product’s brand concept.How should the Posse Ride be designed to maximize its effectiveness and profit-making potential, should you decide to keep it? â€Å"Posse Ride† has to be kept. The following initiatives could be taken to maximize its MKT value: Export the event to coun tries that value US culture; Promote a Posse Ride pilgrimage in different countries at the same period (integrate and make the event bigger); Develop partnership (e.g. tourism companies) to capture higher value from the event; Develop other products aligned with the same image (e.g. perfume, clothing style, fast food chain, video-game, headphone, entertainment); Create a TV program or internet web site to post news and stories about â€Å"Posse Rider†; Invite people abroad to participate;Develop strategy focused to tease young people and women to participate in the event; Connect Posse Ride to mega music shows (e.g. Rock’n Rio and Woodstock); Sustainable initiatives are welcome as well.How the Before-After survey data can help you with your recommendations? To measure trends of consume, make changes in the product and to identify new groups of customers; To assess points to be solved to obtain a higher member’s satisfaction.How are brand communities build? Build a strong idea/concept that can aggregate people around it; Offer to them the opportunity to get in contact/socialize (events and internet); Provide new ideas connected to the main concept (innovate);Promote and coordinate meetings.How can we identify communities and its members? Assessing consume behavior; What is Harley’s brand identity? Adventure, challenge, freedom, rebellious. Opportunity to take part of a big pilgrimage and a sense of belonging.What is HOG’s role in developing community for the Harley-Davidson brand? That is the bond that glues members around the product concept; It is what members receive to fulfill their expectations about the product.Evaluate Harley’s attitude and performance in â€Å"getting close to its customers†. Not just to get close to the customers, but more than that, to have an intimal and personal connection with them (they ride and have bears together along the Posse Rider); It helps to develop products and to keep str ong and alive the product concept in front of their customers; Harley-Davidson executives riding side-by-side with all members empowers the event and allow them to understand the company’s connection to their customers.