Author Archives: John

expanding your market? – just look north

MX Performance is one of those books that just feels fresh. Cutting edge without that familiar snarky tone that’s becoming a little too common elsewhere, MXP covers the events and lifestyle of it’s title from BC to Nova Scotia and everything inbetween, including action from below the border.

Does the sport need another pub? Wrong question. What enthusiast magazine is delivered to each and every CMRC (Canadian Motorsport Racing Club) member? That’s a qualified mailing list of a little more than 14,000 riders. Then there’s subscribers, and single-issue sales. Hip graphics, groovy chicks and plenty of content.

echoes of the past

Was the time when any restaurateur worthy of his salt wrapped the dining experience around a book of matches. Like miniature billboards, these relics of a time when smokers accompanied their meals with between rounds cigarettes and end of the evening cigars have pretty much died out as a marketing tool – too many negatives.

I quit smoking in ’96 and haven’t looked back since, but last weekend I came across this nostalgic collectable while exploring a new restaurant, The Blue Fish Sushi, in Boca Raton.

I grabbed one of the colorful mementos on the way out with the idea of adding it to my small, packed away collection of dusty keepsakes from another era. Matchbooks were a fine example of the graphic designer’s art and it struck me as ironic that even though the heyday of this particular vehicle’s come and gone, a new need for small format graphics has taken its place: the cell phone.

market targets two-wheelers

The New York Times Media and Advertising critic Stuart Elliot writes in this week’s column that the nation’s insurers are casting a new net to fetch up bikers, separate and apart from campaigns targeting car, truck and suv owners and none so aggressively as Allstate.

You’ve probably seen Allstate’s print versions in the obvious enthusiast books. The effort from Leo Burnett is also running broadcast, cable and web banners, all circled around the Allstate Garage microsite, a really nifty little piece of Flash ingenuity that’s surprisingly practical and used Indian Larry’s Legacy shop for content. Dissin’ OCC? Looks like, well okay with us.

The $10MM campaign’s aimed squarely at the owners of the country’s estimated 9-million registered bikes. What’s the point? To create awareness of Allstate’s mc channel.

Other industry players include market top dog Progressive, Geico and State Farm.

dealer expo – it has to be said

For the record, as an advertising agency we pay to attend most trade shows. This year’s admission to Dealer Expo was $100. SEMA charged me $15. Performance Racing Industries charged me $0. So when I packed for Indy did I expect a show almost seven times shinier than that automotive mecca in the desert? No. But we also didn’t expect holes in the traditional powersports categories large enough to fly a space shuttle through, holes plugged with some truly questionable merchandise. By the time I finished the dome I halfway wondered how I’d missed the Hoodia franchise booth. Read the followup to February’s report here.

pixels vs. pulp – do you know where your message should be?

You can’t turn a page these days, online or off, without stepping right into the old print-new media “controversy”. I use those cutesy little finger quotes to indicate my suspicions that this is less about controversy and more about contrived drama.

My pal Robin Hartfiel, recent gatekeeper at Motorcycle Product News and Dealernews and industry sage whose card index is legendary even as he eschews a personal cell phone (for now), takes some delight in referring to himself as a print dinosaur simply because he picks and chooses those digital media aids many of us take for granted, discarding most along the way but happily pounding out copy on a wifi enabled laptop nonetheless. More out of the closet than in, I’d say.

I, however, am a true print dinosaur of the Paleozoic age. He’s a poseur, dating only back to the late Jurassic era. I can say that because I know for a fact he never worked on a Linotype, with it’s jingling strands of brass letters imprinting their lines of type into a lead slug. True, he also experienced the heady days when pasteup required double-ought Staedtler tech pens, sniffing Bestine and rubber cement while trying to avoid dicing your fingertips to shreds with an X-acto blade, but sad to say, he wasn’t in the trenches when the hot lead was flying.
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print’s best heads? ever?

So you think coming up with a great headline’s no big deal? So easy a cave man can do it? The New York Post, R. Murdoch’s over the top rant rag, begs to differ. And so do I, even though I’m sure no fan of Lord Rupert’s ideas regarding media’s role.

This summary of the worst of the worst, titled using the Post’s most famous headline ever, succinctly crosses the “t” and dots every “i” of the headline writer’s craft.

Take a walk on the guilty pleasures side of life and explore the Greatest Hits of a tabloid’s reason for being. Buy it for the graphic. Read it for the laughs. Think about it when you consider your next ad’s hook.

P.S. My favorite will always be a now-defunct Weekly World News cover headline, “Fat Woman Impaled On Bicycle Seat.” Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.

hartfiel out at mpn — doh!

Good friend and industry icon Robin Hartfiel was abruptly let go yesterday by Athletic Business Publications, publishers of Motorcycle Product News where he’d hung his helmet as publisher/editor since leaving the same position at Dealernews in October of ’03 after 14 years of service to Advanstar.

A self-described Luddite who nonetheless knows how to crank out the occasionally curmugeonly and always well informed copy regardless of the platform, Hartfiel’s powersports insight is both deep and wide, assuring the next company that wins the inevitable bidding war for his services a Rolodex of contacts and a lifetime of accumulated product knowledge gleaned from covering the industry for both consumer and trade pubs.

Those same skills were responsible for breathing new life into a brand that was drifting when he grabbed the reins, quickly resulting in more sharply focused magazine that got the relationship with the dealer readership back on track.

Whither now MPN? Good question, as Hartfiel’s pool of knowledge is matched by only a few in the business and they don’t seem likely candidates for a move – or move back – to Madison. The decision, coming as it does at a time when print in general’s hemoraging ad pages, could at the least encourage defections from an advertising audience in a down market that’s already nervous and in retreat.

motoczysz inspiration in hi-def

If you’ve ever wanted to hurl after being ambushed by one American Chopper promo too many on the seriously misleading Discovery Channel, relief is at hand. Definitely at hand. On March 25, Discovery International airs Birth of a Racer, chronicling the Portland, Oregon based Team Motoczysz’ shoestring and a prayer entry into the extremely high altitude world of GP racing.

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indy – brave expectations amid challenges

We’re off to Indy tomorrow, where the forecast includes single-digit lows. Hmmmm, guess I’ll pack an extra sweater.

News of White Brothers closing their doors is just one of many news ripples we’re expecting in what’s shaping up to be a bellwether year. I’m anxious to find out how the Asian tsunami of anything other than full sized bikes is playing out. ATVs, SXSs, scooters, pit bikes – all flooding our shores in record numbers, with identical undecipherable logo plays, ridiculous brand labels and a parts and service problem that paints all imports with the same brush.

Marketing’s all about perception and regardless of how efficient the back end manufacturing processes, it’s the sell that wins the day. Will there be any interest in delivering messages that connect, or business as usual as defined by those who don’t shop trying to connect with those who do? We’ll see.

brand? or category?

Think of chocolate, think of Hershey. Buy chocolate, buy M&Ms. Own the brand, lose the category. As a powersports industry that’s already feeling the approaching recession wonders what to do, one approach might be to consider what’s more important – brand, or category? Is there a difference? You bet. And how you define your marketing approach may determine whether your product lives or dies.