Recently, Harley-Davidson, an iconic and classic brand of motorcycle, wanted to launch a consumer engagement program to coincide with the launch of the new Forty-Eight roadster.  

The campaign involved 48 dealers around Australia and NZ building their own custom Harley Forty-Eight bike within their showrooms. The brief was to customize several parts of the bike - the wheels, seats, handlebars - right through to intricate things that bike-lovers would appreciate like the muffler.

The Build-Off
To promote the work of each dealer, a website was created for dealers to load photos of their custom bikes, and talk through why they were doing certain things - the mechanical benefits, the cosmetic benefits etc.  

Users could visit the site, create a user account by logging directly or logging in via facebook connect, and vote on their favourite bike. They could also comment on bikes, or comment on dealers information.

The Competition
To give users a reason to visit the site and get involved, Harley-Davidson included the opportunity for visitors to win their own Forty-Eight Roadster. Each user needed to complete '48' devotions over a seven week period. Devotions include things such as: Vote on your favourite bike, Comment on your favourite dealer, Share a bike with five of your friends, Upload a video of why you think you deserve to win the Forty-Eight .

Why Social Media?
Competitions have a huge take up rate in the Facebook environment. Each post from the site generates interest on a person's wall, for example "Simon just went in the running to win a Forty-Eight roadster by commenting on the hottest bike in the Judgement Day competition" - and so engages interest virally.

Using the 'Like ' function in Facebook is another very easy way to spread a message. For example, if I have 500 friends on Facebook and I click 'Like ' on a bike within the competition, potentially 500 people will see a message "Simon likes a bike on the Judgement Day competition". If one of my friends 'likes' that post, or visits the site and does it themselves, all of their friends will also see the post. The result is an exponential number of views of my post.

This campaign also involved the use of YouTube by uploading user content to the Judgement Day channel on YouTube and this increases Harley's presence on the platform.  

The Results
A resounding success and thanks to clever consumer engagement the campaign featured an amazing 8,000 unique visits and 1,500 subscribers by day four alone.

Check it out at www.harleyjudgementday.com.au

For more information on the campaign or similar strategies, give us a call at eletta and we can put you in touch with the team at eStrategy.

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