Ditch the cage, ride a Harley

Most sheeple live in a cage and they don’t even know it. Car payments, mortgage payments, fair trade coffee and v-neck sweaters. Well, they don’t even know it until you ride past and remind them. Your freedom is why they hate you (also, it’s your incredibly annoying loud pipes, but don’t think about that right now). This promises to be a brilliant ad from Harley.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r87At0S6jH0

Clever message? Check. Creative idea? Check. High production values and eye-catching graphics? Check. Subverting the traditional brand image with cute, powerful creative? Check....oh wait, there it is, there’s the cheese rock, cheesier voice over and limp call to action.

Damnit Harley, if you’d just cut it at the guy rattling his cage this would have been brilliant, instead the juxtaposition of a message and ad that’s relevant to non-pot bellied pirates is lost the second you flip the switch on the whammie bar. Instead of making people think of your brand in a new way, this ad instead ends up reinforcing the lame wannabe badass image that the world outside Hardrock Cafe can see right through. Also, cutting from the real world to the virtual is exactly the reverse of what your brand should stand for, adding further plummet to the ending.

Harley, despite all your efforts to destroy it, you still have a powerful brand. The bike moving through traffic, the sound and maybe a logo at the end would have been enough.

And yes, all this effort to advertise the fact that you no longer need to pick up a catalog to pick out which tassels and tribal decals you want to add to your finance plan.

Thanks for the tip, Paul.