a marriage hand crafted in hell

Influx Insights — 2007-09-25T13:20:35Z

How can something feel so wrong and so right?

"Building on a relationship between two Milwaukee neighbors that dates to Harley-Davidson's 90th anniversary celebration in 1993, Miller Lite will be the exclusive malt beverage sponsor of next year's Harley-Davidson 105th Anniversary Celebration. The only light beer to win four gold medals in the bi-annual World Beer Cup's American-style Light Lager category, Miller Lite will feature a national summer promotion highlighting the Harley-Davidson affiliation."

It makes perfect sense, but then you think again and you are not so certain.

Of course, the partnership involves lots of safe driving activities, but the desired message Miller clearly wants to communicate is "rebel beer" and that's a little bit of a conflict.

Perhaps, this is a win-win for Miller because the more negative press they get the more rebellious the brand will seem.

Posted by Ed Cotton

getting the masses on bicycles

Influx Insights — 2007-04-23T11:47:07Z

There are 161 million Americans who don’t ride bikes.

Shimano saw it as a market opportunity, so they hired IDEO to find out why.

From spending time with non-bikers, IDEO discovered there were a number of attitudes and beliefs these non-riders held, that had become barriers to them ever getting on a bicycle.

1.    They liked biking as children, but adult biking was serious and competitive
2.    The employees in bike retail stores are intimidating
3.    The bikes themselves can be messy and complicated

To overcome the barriers, Shimano went off and created a new category, Coasting.

It’s basically a new carefree philosophy built around meandering around on a bike.

Manufacturers have responding and have produced special bikes with automatic “transmissions”, like Trek’s, new Lime.

Bike manufacturer Trek is hoping to sell 26,000 Limes this year.

Improved sales training and product innovation have tackled many of the barriers identified by IDEO, but the biggest problem is the lack of facilities (bike paths) and that could be too big a problem for Shimano to solve on its own,

Influx Insights Tag Feed: bikes

a marriage hand crafted in hell

getting the masses on bicycles