Rogue marketing to potential dealers...

[Diablo1]

A friend on Badweb said they ran monthly ads in Roadracing World. I never saw a single ad in Cycle World during that whole time. I'll take your word on the other magazines.

Whatever marketing they did, it seems to have been very ineffective because I'm amazed at the number of motorcyclists who never heard of EBR, much less considered buying one.

Don't forget the TV exposure they got for the 1.5 seasons in WSBK.

[Scott]

I have subscriptions to Roadracing World, Cycle World and Motorcyclist. I remember seeing regular adds in Roadracing World, but few (if any) in CW and Motorcyclist. RRW is probably a little less expensive, but it's also a fairly small, focused audience (and an audience that would probably already know at least something about EBR).

For their size and goals at the time, the Roadracing World ads probably made sense to try to get a lot of exposure to a focused audience - but the combination of questionable race performance and then the Hero pull-out before they had a chance to build anything made that campaign fairly worthless. Another year or two combined with some WSBK success, and they probably would have looked like geniuses.

If I had anything to say about it, I'd go for a more general audience this time around. Compared to most bikes on the road, EBR 1190RX's and SX's are super-cool and exotic. In the racing world, they don't really stand out (at least yet). I think they should continue vigorously supporting club-racing, Splitlath, Moto-America etc. to maintain their racing street-cred, but they should steer clear of WSBK which will just be an embarrassing money-pit for them for the foreseeable future. With enough racing to demonstrate reasonable performance combined with a broader marketing effort aimed at people who like responsive bikes but aren't necessarily into racing, I think they can find a market for 500 bikes a year.

I'm curious what kind of connections they have in China. I'd think some business people there would be interested in selling the championship bike to those who have the money. I could imagine somebody with the right connections could sell the whole year's run of 500 bikes in China if they put their mind to it.

There was apparently some interest building in Australia as well. If an American audience can't appreciate these wonderfully unique bikes, ship them to people who can until more domestic interest builds.