The challenge
Harley-Davidson is one of the most protected brands on earth. As an official franchise dealership, Road & Sport had to honour strict global brand standards while still winning attention in its own market against 51 other dealerships across Australia and New Zealand competing for the same corporate recognition, and against every other way a customer could spend a significant discretionary purchase.
The marketing function was mine end to end: research, strategy, budget, creative, events, digital and reporting.
How the strategy was built
The research started where dealership truth lives: on the floor and on the rides. Sales staff knew which objections killed deals, finance or family, almost never the product. The riding community told me what they actually valued: belonging first, machines second. And the market research clarified our real position: the region's only genuine authorised Harley-Davidson dealership, a claim no competitor could make and, at the time, one we weren't making loudly enough.
That research became a simple segmentation. Riders, who buy community and service. Dreamers, who need finance to bridge desire and driveway. And owners between purchases, whose service, parts and merchandise spend carries the quieter months. Each segment got its own motion: events and email for the riders, finance-led offers like the Road King launch for the dreamers, and seasonal service campaigns, winter oil changes, storage prep, upgrades, for the owners. The calendar followed the riding season, so the marketing always matched what a rider was actually thinking about that month.
What I did
- Turned the community into the channel. Social media and influencer marketing built around riders, rides and the dealership's own events, growing engagement by 75%.
- Executed every layer of the marketing mix. Market research, campaign development, materials creation, retail execution and performance analysis, keeping global brand standards intact while giving the store a local voice.
- Ran the commercial machinery. Marketing budget, competitive analysis, copywriting, website maintenance, CRM and event management, the complete operational stack behind the creative.
- Made finance the acquisition hook. Limited-time finance-rate campaigns carried across print, email, online marketplaces and in-store, one offer, every channel, the same disciplined look.
- Made events the heartbeat. Ride-outs, launches and in-store experiences that converted brand love into showroom traffic and sales conversations.
The work itself
Pieces from the dealership years, print, email and the campaign machinery behind them:
The feedback loop
Every campaign closed its own loop. Email engagement showed which offers deserved a second send. Event turnout was counted against showroom visits the following week. The sales floor debriefed after every push: which enquiries arrived, what they asked about, what closed. And once a year, corporate ran the harshest review available, the Dealership of the Year scoring, effectively an external audit of the whole marketing system against 51 other locations running the same playbook. Winning it meant the loop was working.
The results
- Key contributor to winning "Dealership of the Year" out of 52 AU/NZ locations
- 75% growth in social media and influencer engagement
- A repeatable local marketing system inside one of the world's strictest brand frameworks
Why it matters
Working inside Harley-Davidson's brand framework taught me discipline: how to be creative within guardrails, how to build community-led marketing, and how to make a local business outperform its peers with the same brand toolkit. That discipline has carried through every multi-brand portfolio since.