HARLEY - DAVIDSONFor this project I will be creating an advert which is to go across 3 different media platforms, a 48 sheet poster, an adshel and a press for the metro.

The advert is to create desire and raise awareness for a particular bike model, which in this case is the Fat Boy. I shall look at some of the competitors Harley-Davidson has and also look at some of Harley-Davidsons previous adverts.

Brand History Harley-Davidson is an American motorcycle company which first began in 1901 when the one of the founders William S. Harley completed his first blueprint drawing of an engine which was to fit into a bicycle and in 1903 William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson made the first Harley-Davidson available to the public with one of the first being brought directly from the founders by an old school-yard friend.

Over the next seven years Harley-Davidson began to grow and a year after the 1903 Model was released the very first Harley-Davidson dealership was opened by C.H. Lang, and he sold one of the first three production Harley-Davidson models ever made. Two years later a new factory was built which measured 28 x 80 feet, which was larger than the first which was a simple wooden shed measuring 10 x 15 feet.

In 1909 the company released its very

first V-Twin powered motorcycle which produced a total of 7 horsepower, and the image of the two cylinders was to become an iconic symbol of the Harley-Davidson brand.

It wasn’t until 19010 when the “Bar & Shield” logo was used for the first time and it was trademarked a year later and in 1920 Harley-Davidson became the worlds largest motorcycle manufacturer with new Harley-Davidson models available in over 2000 dealerships in over 67 countries worldwide.

As the years went by Harley-Davidson kept on growing and on 1947 took ownership of what was the A.O. Smith Propeller Plant which was built in the war, and used it as a large machine shop where the new parts would then be shipped off to another factory for final assembly, and in 1947 Harley-Davidson began to sell what became the classic black leather motorcycle jacket.

in 1953 Harley-Davidson celebrated its 50th anniversary, with the creation of an attractive logo which depicted a “V” which was in honour of the engine which had taken the company so far, there was a bar laid over the top which read “Harley-Davidson” with words above and below, “50 years--American made” a medallion version of this logo was placed on the front fenders of the 1954 models. When Hendee Manufacture went out of business it left Harley-Davidson as the sole U.S. motorcycle manufacture for the next 46 years.

The 1990’s saw the introduction of the Fat Boy model and it very quickly became a modern legend of Motorcycle design.

cars and YAMAHA also deals with musical instruments, whereas Harley-Davidson is just motorcycles and so all their passion goes into making each bike perform its best while giving the rider a smooth ride. which is what makes Harley-Davidson stand-out from other motorcycle manufactures, so even in today’s society where there are more bike manufactures, Harley-Davidson is still a popular manufacture within the motorcycle community.

Brand Competition As a motorcycle company Harley-Davidson faces competition from other brands such as BMW, HONDA, YAMAHA and SUZUKI, and even with over a century’s worth of experience that Harley-Davidson has with making motorcycles, they needed to ensure that they remained popular to the public with their unique bikes and style.

With the competitors, they produce a lot of sports bikes which often appear in major races such as the Moto GP, but they do produce bikes similar to Harley-Davidson, however they all have other focuses as well, BMW, SUZUKI,

HONDA all manufacture

Previous AdvertsWith these two Harley-Davidson Adverts they refer to the “Harley Spirit” and in the first one a baby is shown cutting its own umbilical cord which is severing it from the mother and giving it freedom and independence which is what they are trying to show, that when you buy a Harley-Davidson you will feel freedom, and the same with the second advert where its showing a young boy using stick-on tattoos to give him a sleeve style tattoo which when you think about your stereotypical biker they have lots of tattoos on their bodies.

The third advert is all about how with a Harley-Davidson you just ride, you don’t care of the destination because you love riding your motorcycle, and therefore the destination isn’t important.

Campaign length and pricesI would like my campaign to stretch across a 3 month period, in the London area in order for my advert to be seen by my target audience I will have it on a 48 sheet poster, adshel and also a press ad in the Metro.

Billboard:The pricing for a single 48 sheet billboard in London for 3 months is £1950.With this information, in order to get my adverts seen as much as possible I would hire three billboards for a period of 3 months which would be at different strategic locations throughout London therefore extending the adverts reach. The cost of this would be £5,850.

AdshelThe pricing for a single regional 6 sheet poster is £675 for three months, in order to have my advert seen by as many people as possible I would hire four 6 sheet posters for a 3 month period, these would be placed in different town centres and in high streets, to gain attention from the public. The cost of this would be £2,700.

Press: MetroFor a full page colour ad in the Metro for just London, the price is £28,798. The price for a national full page colour ad is £36,104.60. In order to extend my adverts reach I would chose the national full page, so it can enter the circulation because people will buy the metro, for a train journey and then they may leave it on the train and someone else will probably pick it up and look and therefore extending the amount of people the advert reaches, I would only run it for 1 month as things get boring when seen over and over again in tabloids.

The Total amount to spend on this campaign would be £44,654.60

Initial IdeasWith this idea I decided to just focus on a certain area of the bike, so I decided to chose the rear end of it and I decided to be a bit edgy with the slogan, because the stereotypical bike is a man who has a big build with him so many would slander him as a fat boy, and due to the bike model being named Fat Boy, I found it to be an amusing play-on-words.

This idea was mainly based on breaking the stereotype of bikers, as the woman in the image would be dressed in a business-style suit with the Harley-Davidson in the background, so not only is the woman breaking the biker stereotype due to her social class, and therefore bringing in the female audience, but it also appeals to the male audience because the woman can be seen as desirable. The strap-line I used was to say that no matter what you do, you will love your Harley-Davidson This idea was mainly directed at the female audi-ence, and so I used hair-dryers which are commonly related to women. In order to show how Harley-Da-vidson was better, I decided to incorporate the dou-ble exhaust, which many of the Harley models have, and make it look like a hair-dryer. I also thought about comparing it to another, and so I did but I made it smaller than the Harley-Davidson version, and I branded it with the BMW logo, the strap-line is to make the audience look and think what one would be better to have, one which is just your everyday hair-dryer, or a bigger and more powerful hair-dryer.

This origin of this idea came from a selection of movies where tire-marks are left behind after a vehicle has sped away, and so I thought about using the setting as a street in London and the tire-mark would feature the words “LEAVE YOUR MARK” which would create a desire for the audience to leave their mark on the streets of London or wherever they go they can leave their mark when they ride a Harley-Davidson

With this idea I tried to focus more on the specific parts which make up the Harley-Davidson Fat Boy and so I looked at the heart of the motorcycle which was its V shaped engine. The catchphrase I used was intended to gain interest because Harley-Davidson’s have a very throaty sound when someone rides past, and so its was trying to get people to want to listen to the sound the Fat Boy makes.

This idea was just one I wanted to keep simple and so it would feature the front of the motorcycle, the logo and a catchphrase, but I thought just make it less busy because sometimes adverts which are simple are sometimes the more effective ones.

This idea was mainly focused at women, because they are also part of the target audience, and so I chose to again keep it simple, the only text in the advert would of been the text in the logo, but what i was trying to do was play with the biker stereotype and so that is why I made the logo appear to be a tattoo on a woman’s arm, but it was to mimic the well known heart tattoo with an arrow through it, and so instead of the heart I used the Harley-Davidson logo

When looking at the previous Harley-Davidson adverts, I noticed how they have used children which is where the inspiration for this idea came from, and it’s trying to get the message across to the audience that no matter what your age is, when you have a Harley-Davidson you feel ageless and you can enjoy yourself as if you were a child with a new toy, which is sort of where the catchphrase for this advert came from because its all about having fun as if you were a child again

This idea is similar to one of my other ideas however I haven’t kept it simple, and so I decided to try and make it more interesting to the public eye, by having the add look like someone was opening a door and light is shining onto the front of the motorcycle and in the headlight the image of a London icon can be seen. The catchphrase I came up with is almost giving the motorcycle a personality, because when you go to a new place you want to explore everything, and it can also be related to the name of the bike Fat Boy through the thought of the stereotypical “Fat” person because most people think they are always hungry.

With this idea I tried to revert back to just looking at the parts, and so for this I thought about the parts which hold the bike together and so I decided to use nuts/bolts, the image would be a close up of the end of the bolt, and there would be the Harley logo placed on the top, so it looked like it was embossed. The catchphrase is just to emphasise how Harley-Davidson’s Fat Boy is built with parts which are all of a high quality because the company itself is passionate about its bikes

This idea was came from when I had a lack of ideas, so I went onto the website and I was looking at what makes a Harley-Davidson Fat Boy unique, and I came across a description which was “Your boots were made for riding” and so, still sticking to focusing on certain parts of the motorcycle, I focused on the footplate, and used it to create an advert from it, the footplate was the image and the text was based around it

Like my previous idea i took inspiration from the different qualities that the Fat Boy has, and with this one I focused on the wheels of the bike because it said that the larger wheels increase the shock absorption of the road and so you experience a much smoother ride, and the only way the audience could confirm it, is if they knew someone who had taken it for a test drive or if they owned on, or they could go to a local dealership and actually ask to test drive one for themselves to experience it first hand

Progressed IdeasI decided to take this advert forward into the development stage because I wanted to go against the typical biker stereotype and use a woman, and it seemed like quite a simple advert to produce, which is also the reason why I probably wont make this my final advert, because I would like to challenge myself to do a bit more and use the software in more depth, but this idea was probably my favourite one because it looked like it would be fun to put together. The background of the advert was going to be black and the woman was going to be dressed in a suit to make herself seem like a business woman who you wouldn’t suspect to own a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

This idea was more of a challenge for me to try and put together because I wanted to make it look well made, which is one of the reasons why i preferred this idea over the other one, as this one would require me to use more tools in Photoshop and experiment with them in order to try and get the desired outcome, similar to the other idea the background would be black and half of the bike would be faded to black to almost give the illusion that someone is opening a door to a shed and light shines through and lights up the other half of the bike.

Final Outcome48 sheet

With my final idea, I tried my best to keep it similar to the developed idea, but I did have to change some elements such as where the type was going to go, but i am quite pleased with the outcome, the type is the same colour orange as the logo and i kept the background black and I was able to make the look like half of it was hidden in darkness while the other half is shining in daylight. I found trying to create the reflected image in the headlight a challenge but i think it looks quite convincing, but it gave me time to try and exper-iment with the different tools within Photoshop and InDesign.

AdshelPress Ad: Metro

Referencing ListHistory: http://www.harley-davidson.com/content/h-d/en_US/home/museum/explore/hd-history/1900.html

Images: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/BMW.svg/2000px-BMW.svg.png, http://image.atvrideronline.com/f/newsfront/1003_atvp_american_honda_expansion_2010_racing_contingency_pro-gram/28505899%2Bpheader_460x1000/1003_atvp_01_z%2Bamerican_honda_expansion_2010_racing_contingency_program%2Bnew_honda_logo.jpghttp://www.motorrad-suzuki-chemnitz.de/suzuki.gifhttp://images.motorcycle-usa.com/photogallerys/yamaha-logo-non-racing.jpghttp://www.totalmotorcycle.com/motorcycles/2013models/2013-Yamaha-VStar650Classic1.jpghttp://www.totalmotorcycle.com/photos/2009models/2009-Suzuki-BoulevardC50a.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/BMW_R_51-3_motorcycle_1951_-_3.jpghttp://www.totalmotorcycle.com/photos/2011models/2011-Honda-ShadowRS-VT750RSa.jpg

Adverts: http://files1.coloribus.com/files/adsarchive/part_1493/14937905/harley-davidson-baby-260-12925.jpghttp://www.bestadsontv.com/files/print/2012/Jan/41782_harleydavidson-tattoo.jpghttp://www.abitoftony.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/harley-ad-map.jpg

Advert Pricing: http://directionalmedia.co.uk/products/rate-cardhttp://advertising.metro.co.uk/pdf/ratecards/Ratecard.pdfimages: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSjK02aj5QZFg-KL4xG76vFYEqaFuHfdVX7Ohttp://www.prepressure.com/images/printing-abribus-adshel.jpghttp://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bvFcPapeOD0/Ts5KkzTSrgI/AAAAAAAAAZY/7WAoufWfk14/s1600/