Rogue marketing to potential dealers...

[buell-fan]

Just like it sounds, we owners need to help get potential dealers involved, with LAP, to keep EBR a viable American brand for decades to come. Take your bike to the local multi-brand power sports dealership and ask to talk to the owner or sales manager or, if they happened to be closed while you are out tooling around, take a few pictures of your bike in front of their dealership. Then sell them with a few words of the EBR attributes, how the American sportbike company needs new dealers to survive competing with the foreign bikes, and that four EBR sportbikes does not take up a lot of floor space! Keep it short and sweet, just enough to get them interested and willing to look into it further. And don't forget to link EBR and LAP's websites in the email. I am pretty sure that becoming an EBR dealer at this point would take little capital to bring dealers on board, on both the LAP end and the dealers end.

[noone1569]

I'd be happy to do this, if I can get a warranty, lol

[Ed / AF1 Racing]

want to get a potential dealer excited and on-board?

Have at least 4 people put down a $500 deposit towards a 2016 model at that potential dealer.

So far, we have not had any calls, emails, or interest in the 2016s, and no deposits. The decision is making itself for us.

[buell-fan]

Ed, don't let the decision make itself yet. The EBR brand hasn't been marketed at all for nearly a year, and was a fledgling company for just over a year before that. That being said, maybe a bit of unconventional dealership and manufacturer agreements could be made where dealers would have bikes on the floors to be looked at by potential buyers. As you know, the bikes need to marketed in some way to get people interested enough to get to the deposit stage. This means that they need to have bikes on the floors at the very least. If there aren't new bikes on the showroom floors to sell no one will be able to even evaluate whether a deposit is warranted. The dealers and LAP need to come up with an non-conventional strategy to get bikes sitting on the floor that will benefit both parties while other marketing is being done to actually get people to the dealerships..

[Hellgate]

AF1 already has 2016's on the floor, they are brand new 2014's, and one of the cool limited edition carbon bikes. Trust me there is not lack of effort from AF1 to promote and sell the bikes. Even when EBR was racing WSBK, and EBR ads were in all of the magazines they couldn't move them. It's isn't a lack of marketing, it's a matter of having the right bike for the market and the consumer having the confidence that the brand will be there for the long run.

[noone1569]

So, Dean Hodel, one of the creators of the increasingly popular Bay Area Racing, and a buell owner (turboing an xb right now), posted this up in the 1190 owners group on facebook:

I just worked out a deal with Yahoo Autos, they will be posting some of my content to their website once or twice a week. (weekends at peak hours) I also get decent prices on track rentals as I own a company that hosts track days. How hard would be be to get a group of EBR's together, to make a trip to northern California for a private track day out at thunderhill raceway. I bet we can make an awesome video and the publicity would be huge. Maybe even get 650ib out there with with a few of his high end bikes and get some shots of some heads up drag racing, as well as cool road racing shots. EBR (https://www.facebook.com/ErikBuellRacing/)'s latest video wasn't exactly doing much for the brand IMO.

- - -

I messaged him and asked if he had spoke to EBR about this as it would be a great opportunity for the brand for some cheap, great marketing.

His reply: "yes, simply a "we have no plans to going to the west coast any time soon" as a response"

- - -

I don't care how you shake it, that's not good.

[Hughlysses]

Even when EBR was racing WSBK, and EBR ads were in all of the magazines they couldn't move them.

EBR ran ads in "all of the magazines"? I don't remember seeing a single print ad for EBR. I'm a long-time subscriber to Cycle World and often pick up other magazines like Roadracing World and Motorcyclist.

[QtheBUELLIGAN]

I asked to be a dealer....got the run around like anyone else did that wasn't a part of the previous dealer network.....

[Hellgate]

EBR ran ads in "all of the magazines"? I don't remember seeing a single print ad for EBR. I'm a long-time subscriber to Cycle World and often pick up other magazines like Roadracing World and Motorcyclist.

Yes, they had a very nice marketing campaign and tons of press. IIRC ads were in Sport Bike, Motorcyclist and Cycle World. Unfortunately I don't have any issues from 2014, print or digital.

[Hughlysses]

Yes, they had a very nice marketing campaign and tons of press. IIRC ads were in Sport Bike, Motorcyclist and Cycle World. Unfortunately I don't have any issues from 2014, print or digital.

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.

[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.