If one were to grade the marketing efforts in the motorcycle industry, you’d be hard pressed to hand out a grade better than a B- to one of the major OEMs. While some companies have produced some brand value, carved out a defensible niche for themselves, or caught on to this whole internet fad thing, none of the OEMs really do a bang-up job of hitting all the standard marketing best practices.
If we had to single out one company that needs a letter sent home to mom, it has to be Aprilia, as the Italian company constantly proves itself to be the pants-on-head retarded (sorry Sarah Palin) window-licking moron (sorry again Sarah Palin) paste-eating buffoon (we’re not sorry for that one) of motorcycling media. Report card: F with a “does not play well with others” note attached.
We don’t know how a company with a sport bike history launches a new exciting motorcycle that wins the World Superbike Championship in its second year of campaigning, and still manages to get the snot beaten out of it by BMW in liter bike sales. How does a company fail to capitalize on that sort of accomplishment?
Maybe it’s time someone in Aprilia HQ woke up and realized that the “race on Sunday, sell on Monday” sales slogan just doesn’t work, despite how cool it sounds when someone rattles it off like the eleventh commandment. Of course that cute little phrase might work better if dealerships were actually open on Mondays, but we feel like that’s asking far too much from the motorcycling industry sometimes.
We don’t know what we hate more about this video: the fact that it is really just not that funny, and makes an over-stated jab at Ducati riders (all of Aprilia’s marketing on the RSV4 as of late seems to be more about putting down the competition than promoting its own offering, which isn’t really that classy of a move for a “sophisticated” brand, let alone rarely results in sales increases), or the fact that Aprilia actually paid a social media company to make it.
The Italian company should just go back to buying off online publications to make its viral videos, at least those were mildly entertaining with their “I’m 18 and angry at my father” teenage angst, despite the clear conflicts of “reporting” going on.
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