Brands have been powerful since they took the coca out of Coca-Cola, but there was a time when the product was often as enduring as the brand, when you could hope to pass your prized possessions on to your progeny — or at least be buried with them, pharaoh-style. Harley-Davidson used to be one of those brands, signifying a sort of indomitable endurance that, you’d hope, would apply to its motorcycles as well as their riders.

Now, Harley-Davidson is facing a crisis as its core market ages, according to Fortune magazine. Harley fans who decided to pass on that whole “live fast, die young” scene are now dealing with the effect of high winds and vibrating handlebars on arthritis and rheumatism, and deciding that maybe you can still hear the call of the road from the inside of a Corolla.

That is the problem with aiming your product at young rebel iconoclasts. The next generation of young rebel iconoclasts eventually comes along and looks at the last generation of ex-iconoclasts steadily assimilating into mainstream society, and decides that whatever the older folks like must be, on the “cool” scale, somewhere between hopscotch and being tucked into bed with a stuffed pony and a kiss on the forehead.

Harley-Davidson used to have an advantage on that front. The archetypal Harley rider, a long time ago, was a leather-clad young Marlon Brando with a coyly cocked cap. He looked like some sort of BDSM milkman, but he was extremely cool.

Nowadays you think of a Harley fan and you think of someone who’s balding, gray-bearded and has a beer gut the size of his fuel tank — and he’s still cool. You put an old bald fat guy in a Prius or a junior high school teacher’s lounge and there’s no coolness-measuring device on the market or in any research lab that can detect anything cool about that guy. The only conclusion is that some combination of a Harley-Davidson, a leather jacket and gravel dents in your face actually creates coolness.

So Harley had a chance, a rare chance, to survive the ravages of fashion and work its oil-stained alchemy on generation after generation of largely identical rebel iconoclasts. So what happened?

Cookie jars happened.

I was on an airplane somewhere over New Mexico, looking through the SkyMall catalog, maybe a decade ago, when I realized that Harley-Davidson was pretty much over as a cool brand. There, among the Sharper Image air ionizers and the inflatable pillows, was a Harley-Davidson cookie jar shaped like a motorcycle, as well as a plush Harley-Davidson pig and similar items that make hopscotch look like single-malt Scotch by comparison.

And it’s not just that they were marketing these kitschy Harley tchotchkes, it’s that they were marketing them to people who were flying over New Mexico rather than, say, driving across the state toward Mexico on the run from about 50 cops. The signifier had been forcibly removed from the signified and sent to a re-education camp run by cheerleaders and smiling grandmothers.

But I’m not a complainer. I’m a problem-solver! I think it’s too late to win over a new generation of motorcyclists. There’s too little 3G coverage in the middle of New Mexico anyway. However, the people who currently ride hogs must be the hardest-dying of the die-hards, having survived decades of life on the road with nothing between them and the asphalt but a layer of leather and a fading Skynyrd T-shirt.

They’ve also been able to think of themselves as Harley people in spite of the increasing ridiculousness of the brand. Clearly, they’re going to be around for another 20 years or so, and they want to be on something with the Harley logo for all of them.

Think of the possibilities: Harley-Davidson-branded Segways. Harley versions of those three-wheeled scooters people ride around gated neighborhoods and Costcos. Harley stair lifts that make that distinctive rattling roar as they transport you upstairs in ease.

Let Harley-Davidson die-hards go to that highway in the sky in, if not dignity, at least denial.

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Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a wild child, a flower child and an inner child.

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Authors: Lore Sjöberg

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