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Step Right Up and Get Your Authentic Erik Buell Racing Wheel – Slightly Used from MMP

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You gotta love Erik Buell. Say what you will about his motorcycles, but the guy and his team live outside of the box, and it’s awesome. When Geoff May had an off at Miller Motorsports Park, and launched his Erik Buell Racing 1125RR into the air, the result was this busted PVM forged magnesium rear-wheel.

While most teams would throw it into the scrap heap, EBR is instead auctioning it off on eBay to help raise the funds needed for a replacement wheel. That’s entrepreneurship at it’s finest folks. The only thing that makes this auction better, is the description that follows.

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Racing

Send Your Well Wishes to Valentino – Yamaha Adds “Support Rossi” Tab to Facebook Page

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Yamaha Racing has added a tab on their Facebook fan page that allows fans to send Valentino Rossi their support while the Italian GP rider recovers this week in the hospital.

Clearly Valentino Rossi is a huge part of the current MotoGP racing landscape, and has fans all around the world who wish to see the Champion return to MotoGP as soon as possible.

Yamaha is also one of the most media savvy manufacturers in the paddock, so it’s no surprise they’re using social media like this to connect Rossi to his fans while he’s in the hospital.

Follow this link if you wish to send Valentino Rossi a “get well” message on Facebook.

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Opinion/Editorial

Let’s Hype This Bitch! – 60 Day Wait for the 2010 Ducati Multistrada 1200

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Ducati has reported that the first 500 initial pre-orders for the 2010 Ducati Multistrada 1200 have been filled, and there is now a 60 day waiting period for the new sport-tourer. Citing a strong reception to the Multistrada’s “four-bikes-in-one” capability, Ducati sees an additional 500 units to be sold in the coming months. This last statement seems sort of like a no-brainer, after-all another 500 bikes will be sold eventually, right?

Actually, the entire statement is sort of strange when you consider what 500 pre-sold orders really entails in a markets like the United States & Canada. With a plethora of dealers in these countries, the reality is that this statement amounts to dealerships pre-selling their initial inventory, which consisted of one or two motorcycles. Yes, the Ducati Multistrada 1200 is sold-out for the next two month, but when you ship only 500 units to the entire North American market, you can almost guarantee being sold out on a bike during its release, right?

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News

Marissa Miller Poses for Harley-Davidson – Future Ambassador to Woman Motorcyclists?

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Here’s an interesting one for you marketing mavens. Harley-Davidson has tapped Marissa Miller to help promote its Nightster series of motorcycle, which isn’t really news. After all this isn’t the first time that a blonde beauty and a motorcycle have been paired in marketing photoshoot, and it also isn’t the first time that Miller has posed for the Milwaukee brand: she was also the company’s spokesperson for Harley’s “Military Appreciation Month” campaign.

The real interesting aspect of this campaign is the fact that Miller comes from a family of motorcyclists, and is a Harley-Davidson rider herself. While some chalk this up to clever publicity statements, it could be a sign there’s some blood still pumping in the Milwaukee marketing department afterall. What better way is there to get women to enter a male dominated industry than with an uber-feminine sex symbol who still manages to maintain all that sex appeal while riding on one of the most recognizable symbols of our industry? Photos from the shoot, and a behind the scenes video after the jump.

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News

Harley-Davidson Hits Chatroulette – Internet Genius or Advertising Disaster, You Make the Call

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There is no doubt at this point that Harley-Davidson needs to engage new markets and customers in order for the company to continue to succeed. Along this vein, the Milwaukee brand recently retained the services of Sassenbach Advertising to help push the biker message out onto the internet. With virtually no budget, a computer, and a webcam, the German ad agency engaged over 170,000 people per week with the Harley-Davidson brand message “Sorry I’m on the Road” on Chatroulette, the latest internet craze.

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Banter

Video: Aprilia Marketing Tries to Go Viral

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Next up on our diatribe of motorcycle marketing gone bad, we have Italian manufacturer Aprilia Motorcycles. In an attempt to latch onto this whole “internet” thing they’ve been hearing people talk about outside of the office, the Piaggio Group member has discovered the FaceTubeSpace’s of the .com revolution as a great marketing medium. Hoping for just one killer hit on the interwebs, we have the following video, aptly titled “Aprilia Dorsoduro 750 Factory viral”, which clearly shows the intent behind its production.

Aprilia, here’s a free tip: viral videos historic never include the word “viral” in the title. The video isn’t a bad concept at all (does everyone get the part about how riding the Dorsoduro Factory is like a roller-coaster?), and we love the 2010 Aprilia Dorsoduro Factory as a bike, but with low production budgeting, and 300 views as of this writing, we’re thinking this advertisement isn’t quite living up to its hype. Check the video out after the jump (and be sure to send it to all your friends).

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News

Ducati Multistrada 1200 Video Recap

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How important is the 2010 Ducati Multistrada 1200 to the Italian company? Consider this, despite releasing a bevy of new and revised motorcycles for the 2010 model year, only the Multistrada 1200 has seen the Bologna company bend over backwards to market its sport-tourer with a bevy of videos. Part of this is due to the extra pocket change seen in the adventure segment of motorcycling, but an even more important reason for Ducati’s aggressive media push is the need for the Italian brand to stand for something more than just expensive sport bikes.

Before there were Hypermotards and Multistrada 1200’s, Ducati still saw the lion’s share of its sales come from the Monster line, despite the company being better known for its Superbike line. Unlike some other companies, Ducati was fortunate enough to realize that you can’t play in only one market segment, and began looking for new ways to expand it’s product lineup…thus the Multistrada 1200 was born. In an effort to keep up with all the marketing around the beak-nosed bike, we’ve compiled all of the Ducati Multistrada 1200 videos we could find, so sit back, grab a beverage, and enjoy them after the jump.

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Opinion/Editorial

How to Save Harley-Davidson – Step 2: Shift Your Product Lineup into New Segments

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35 motorcycles, 7 model lines, 4 chassis, 3 motor families, & 1 market segment, that’s Harley-Davidson’s product line by the numbers. Where many large production motorcycle companies might have 30 or so motorcycles that span the entire gamut of motorcycling’s different sub-markets, Harley-Davidson has put all of its eggs in the heavy cruiser market. This singular pursuit of one market segment has not only been the cause for Harley’s success, but also a significant contributing factor to the company’s recent downfall, which has led to a recently rumored leveraged buyout.

As the old idiom goes, one should not put all their eggs in one basket, which is exactly the faux pas being committed here by Harley-Davidson in its product offering. Businesses, especially public ones, should always have an eye on sustained long-term growth, and a key element to that goal is a well-diversified position in their appropriate industry. Taking this lens and applying it to Harley-Davidson, one can immediately see a portfolio that has been extensively mismanaged by focusing on only one segment of the total motorcycle industry: the heavy cruiser market.

What this has effectively created is a motorcycle company that looks like Alfred Hitchcock’s take on Baskin Robins: 31 flavors, but they’re all Rocky Road.

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Products

Ducati: We’ll Put Our Logo on Anything

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Ducati owns probably the most valuable brand name in motorcycling, and like many brands Ducati finds ways to monetize this asset by licensing it out to other companies. One great marriage and example of this is the Ducati branded apparel available from Puma, which sees both brands benefitting from a racing/apparel association. One not so great example of this concept however is the Toshiba Satellite U500 Ducati Edition laptop, which sees the vanilla of portable computers get stamped with the mark of Corse Rosa.

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Opinion/Editorial

How to Save Harley-Davidson – Step 1: Redefine and Reposition The Way You Market Your Brand

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Blasphemy, heresy, stupidity, sacrilege, un-American, and downright irreverence. Go ahead, get all those words out of your system. I’ll wait.

The default opinion of marketers, analysts, and the general population is that Harley-Davidson has one of the strongest brands in the United States, this being confirmed by the fact that every business student in America has studied Harley’s marketing efforts if they’ve ever taken a brand management course. So why would I start a three-part series on how to fix Harley-Davidson by arguing to change one of the most revered marketing houses in the motorcycle industry?

Giving credit where credit is due, Harley-Davidson, or I should say its admirers in business school academia, wrote the book on demand generation marketing geared towards the baby-boomer generation. However, in defending this market position, Harley-Davidson has painted itself into a corner by only engaging a very small segment of the population with its product. Unless they redefine and reposition their company image and who it resonates with, Harley-Davidson is going to watch the continued erosion of its footing in the motorcycle industry, and also the continued deterioration of its only industry leading quality: its brand.

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