Harley Davidson:bringing the brand mission to life

Many brand visions and missions don’t get past a page of Powerpoint and fail to inspire anyone. A good example of how to dramatically bring to life a vision is the film produced by Harley Davidson called "Live by it", that I learnt about through the Church of the Customer blog.

The brand movie clearly and compellingly communicates the brand’s "creed" of freedom of expression, and freedom of the road. The film is accessed via the brand’s website, and has also been posted on You Tube. Harley riders are also invited to share their own personal creeds, as explained on the customer listening blog.

The other interesting thing about this example is how Harley’s ability to have such as emotionally charged mission is based 100% on the quality and uniqueness of the product, that really is the co-star of the movie if not the main attraction. Indeed, the most fundamental step in re-launching the brand was to fix the build quality and reliability, that had fallen behind Japanese competition.

5-minute workout: how are you bringing to life your brand vision? How could you use music and video to create a brand film like the one done by Harley Davidson?