This news is highly deserving of being told, but it has also already been told in detail, just yesterday. While normally I would just share the article on social media, the topic as a whole deserves a moment on the soap box. Specifically, the lid has been blown off a paid campaign to get MAGA influencers to call Harley-Davidson woke, gay, and fundamentally anti-American, while promoting Indian Motorcycle’s 125th Anniversary and their made-in-America machines.
Let me just give you the article if you are already up to speed and just want the information. I believe Vintagent did the best job with their research, so see their article from June 4th.The summary is also easy: Indian was sold by its parent company and the new owners hired a PR firm, which in turn hired a former Trump campaign advisor. Unsurprisingly, they tapped the MAGA-sphere to post that Harley sucks and Indian is awesome. Chat bots then fill up the comments section and retweet, gaming the algorithm to make it go viral. It’s not new if you follow paid marketing.
Stepping onto soapbox…
This is where my point comes in. One thing a savvy marketer doesn’t know about the world of motorcycling is that we spot fakes really quick, and even the most open-minded groups still act as gate keepers. This is because a poser on a motorcycle isn’t just a nuisance: they are someone on a group ride who is going to run into the back of you because they don’t know how to ride for shit.
I can look at your odometer. I can look at the wear pattern on your boots. If you tell me you’re the fastest kid in town I can just look at the edge of your tire for “chicken strips:” the untouched, shiny edge of the tire that tells me exactly how comfortable you are with high angles of lean in the corners.
Motorcycling does not suffer fools. You can buy a metal-head starter kit and go in the mosh pit at a Slayer show and fake it. You can spend a day reading blogs on microbrews and go hang out with the hipsters and talk obscure music references. You can’t fake being a motorcyclist.
What these marketers failed to realize is we already know most of the MAGA-bros decrying Harley aren’t even motorcyclists, so the matching cadence of their talking points reeks of “paid post.” Even those that do ride can quickly be looked up as having said they are selling their Harley in 2024. So, how are they selling it NOW and swearing off the brand forever?
#Authentic
There is a difference between authenticity and hashtag-authenticity. It’s very hard to define but you also can spot it quickly without and training. Sadly, this isn’t a universal skill, and people are led like sheep by these trend-humping fashion-lemmings. It’s rage-baiting for people that don’t want to think.
In short, if you are influenced by an influencer, you are under the threshold to be called an adult. Perhaps cult-adult? I’ll coin it here first. And why do people line up to get pissed on by these people who are just paid shills? I couldn’t tell you. I do know that some people absolutely need comfort and find it in the familiar, so having someone you see every day on a screen can synthesize that feeling.
To me that’s a disgustingly hollow existence, and I’d prefer the unknown 10 times out of 10. But I’m not Joe Everyman. But my real point is, this is a huge backfire for Indian Motorcycle. In fairness they didn’t likely sign off on this: they hired an outside firm to help sharpen their image. That firm decided to shit-post Harley using an obvious campaign of paid influencers to copy/paste their talking points, assuming the average biker to be as smart as the average Trump voter. Fair assumption, but assuming a hand grenade is inert and then pulling the pin to verify isn’t exactly smart.
Personally, based only on optics, I’d be more likely to buy a Harley because the MAGA-sphere hated them. Harley lost its counter-culture vibe when accountants and dentists started riding them, and Indian moved in to be a counterpoint to the counterpoint. Having haters is way better than having no one know you exist — at least when you are a brand selling a product.
Anti-influencer
This is one of the reasons I’d never make it as a paid personality, turning a 15-minutes of fame moment into a career of just talking about stuff. Plenty of people have done it, but it requires you to not be you, then sell what you say as your authentic self. It’s long been called “selling out” but it’s even deeper with the always-on world of social media. Everything you say is recorded, and you can’t delete it. Being a performer is one thing.
I don’t care if a metal band is actually a bunch of dorks in real life; if the music is good and the stage show is good, then the band is good. But faking it when you’re off stage? Yuck. And you can say that social media IS the stage for influencers, but that’s just pointing to the problem and telling me it’s the solution.
You can’t say what you think, so you aren’t “real” in any sense. Hell, you can’t even say, “I don’t know” when it comes to some product you are paid to promote. It has to be the best. Or in this case, the other brand has to be “gay.” Childish, to say the least.
End Rant
There’s no culmination for this piece. Really I think you should read the article from Vintagent, even if you’re not into motorcycles. If you’re into how businesses operate and how human behavior influences the world we interact with, this is a master class, and it’s so new right now that no one has even been able to respond. I’m sure Indian will keep quiet, but if the social media team at Harley has any hair on their ass, they’ll fire back, even if tongue-in-cheek.
You see, Indian was bought by Carolwood LP, and if you haven’t heard of them, there’s a reason. It’s an equity company. They have never managed a legacy brand and have never been involved in the motorcycle industry. In short, they have no authenticity: the simply own an authentic brand that goes back to 1901. But us moto-geeks know the Indian brand has been prostituted for more decades than it legitimately operated.
When the original company folded in 1953, British motorcycles were rebadged as Indian and sold in the US. Then Chinese minibikes were sold with the logo. At least two legitimate reboots were attempted as well: one using a cloned Harley engine and the other using an original design. None of them lasted until Polaris folder their own Victory Motorcycle brand and started producing Indian for the 2014 model year.
What I’m saying is, the brand recognition of Indian is by no means solid; it’s been used as a veneer to sell T-shirts for nearly as long as it originally built motorcycles. People can make fun of Harley for selling more T-shirts than motorcycles, but that’s true of Ferrari too, and neither they or Harley owe anyone an apology or explanation for what they do. Carolwood LP, on the other hand, does.
And I don’t want the explanation to come from a #authentic influencer, either.