MAR 8, 2024
NimishAndAkriti
We love storytelling, but ads that deliver the message without taking up too much time have a special place in our heats. Ads are after all, intrusions - they interrupt our lives - so those that do so with minimum fuss and maximum effect are very special, They do not intrude much but get the message across. Five years ago, Harley Davidson came up with precisely this sort of precise ad for its forthcoming electric bikes in France - the Electric Bikers!
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The campaign is a classic example of leveraging a stereotype. Harley Davidson had always been associated with bikers with tattoos, long hair, leather jackets and so on. How do you use this image to convey the onset of electric bikes in a brand known for being a gas guzzler, and that too without alienating existing customers. Agency Lola MullenLowe could have tried to reinvent the Harley rider or come out with a new kind of rider. It did neither.
The agency took the image of the traditional Harley biker. And instead of writing reams about electric vehicles, it simply added an electrified effect to the bikers - making their hair stand! The result was a series of striking images, with typical Harley bikers looking as if they had encountered an electric current, but were not too impressed by it (typical Harley toughies), For copy, the agency used just two words beneath the Harley logo - Electric Soon!
The campaign is one of our favourites because it is so minimal and yet gets the message across brilliantly - Harley Davidson will be soon coming with electric vehicles and they will be so good that the traditional Harley drivers will love them. The images told the story, leaving very little need for words. The brand was coming with new vehicles, new tech but was still the old Harley. And it said all this with one photograph, one logo and two words.
Classic.