How Harley-Davidson embraced older buyers

This event report shows how Harley-Davidson, the motorcycle manufacturer, drove growth among both older and younger consumers at the same time.

How Harley-Davidson embraced older buyers

Geoffrey PrecourtWarc

Old. White. Guys.

The taboos in an interactive age – focused on a newly affluent, upstreaming generation of millennials – rarely have been violated with such intensity, passion and honesty as they were by Mark-Hans Richer, Harley-Davidson's chief marketing officer, in an address to the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) 2015 Masters of Marketing Conference in Orlando, Florida.

"I'm going to go heretical on you," he told his marketing colleagues, "and say that youth does not own cool. Youth does not own growth. Youth does not own innovation or disruption.

"And...

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