The platform remains free (and worth it) but in case you’re feeling philanthropic, I’ve set up a subscription page!
For The Future Indicative, Ep 6 Part 1
Transcript
ALEX EFFGEN
Welcome back to The Future Indicative. I’m Alex Effgen, and in Part 2 of our Motorsports episode, we’ll get curious how these lessons in marketing translate to new generations and their consumer preferences. A vehicle’s substance is important, but what about its style? I always think of very specific brands with very identifiable colors. British cars are always green. Italian cars are best red. With German cars, it’s that silver that strikes an identifiable chord, whether it’s a Beamer or a Mercedes-Benz.
ROB McISAAC
“There’s a reason for that. So in international racing at the turn of the last century, colors were assigned to countries because you wanted from a marketing standpoint to be able to tell who your guys were. And so it was very specific that Italian cars were red. British cars were green. French cars were blue. German cars were silver. And American cars were white.”
ALEX EFFGEN
That was Robert Phillips McIsaac, who puts the RPM in RPM Ventures NC. He’s also a BMW airhead, as you call them in the motorcycle community. And he’s challenging my assumptions on vehicular aesthetics.
ROB McISAAC
“If you ask the question, “What color should a Ferrari be?” We’ll say red, of course. “What color should a Triumph sports car be, or a Jaguar?” And the answer is, well, green, right? And in fact, British racing green isn’t even a color… So Jaguar green is very different than Lotus green, but it’s green. And the most popular automobile color in the United States, if you were to buy a new car today is…white.”
ALEX EFFGEN
In the first part, we learned that when BMW updated their motorcycles in 1974, they went wide with silver smoke—a combination of black and silver. But two years later, the three BMW superbikes that showed up at Daytona International Speedway 50 years ago weren’t silver smoke. They were a new color called Daytona Orange. And they rewrote the record books in this new hue.
ROB McISAAC
“There is an irony that the motorcycles that are painted Daytona Orange came to Daytona to compete in the very first AMA Superbike Race and crushed the competition.
Hans Muth was asked to come up with another color. And he was asked to come up with that color at a meeting that took place in Florida. And he was inspired by the Florida sunrise. And he was inspired by the fact that there was racing and high performance stuff at Daytona. And so he came up with this color that is a montage of orange and silver. Again, really incredibly expensive to produce. It was called Daytona Orange and he said, “Listen, it’s orange and I was in Daytona, so Daytona Orange.”
It was not necessarily a precursor to the fact that those motorcycles would show up at Daytona a year later as a racing team.”
ALEX EFFGEN
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But what happens when a cigar is no longer fashionable? In Part 1, we learned how BMW SPECIALIZED its motorcycles both for the street and the speedway to make them SELL.
Capturing a market, and then keeping it, can be difficult enough within one generation. But in the 50 years since 1976, Boomers begot Gen X and Millennials, who begot Zoomers and Gen Alpha. How do you remain SPECIAL and SELL to a spectrum of age groups that have moved from cigars, to cigarettes, and now vaping?
ROB McISAAC
“The world is changing, and the rules and the formats constantly need to evolve to reflect the outcome that you’re trying to get to. One of the realities back in the 1960s was that gasoline was cheap and so nobody really cared what you ran. Gasoline has become much more expensive. And the rules have changed to force greater fuel efficiency. You don’t want to be perceived as being completely ungreen, which is why in many sports series, including Formula One, they are running hybrid cars now.
The demographics are also changing dramatically. I’m a younger member of the Baby Boom generation. And that is very different than my children who are Millennials or my grandchildren in terms of what their interests and perspectives are.
I think it’s fascinating that Ford chose to apply the Mustang name to one of their electric vehicles, which looks more like an SUV than a sports car. But the reality of it is that it’s a wonderful way of extending the brand Halo into a different space.
And of course, Mustang purists had a stroke when that happened, because that’s not a Mustang. But for a lot of younger people, when they look at the historic Mustang sports cars, they go, Well, that’s not a car I would ever buy. So how do you make that work? And that’s a really important notion for companies as they go forward.”
ALEX EFFGEN
At the end of Part 1, Rob mentioned that “history has this unfortunate aspect of repeating itself for those who don’t pay attention.”
And we’ve seen this happen in the past. Many motorcycle companies could not SECURE their legacies when the future came calling.
ROB McISAAC
“If you think about the motorcycling world, many of the British manufacturers were at the pinnacle of their game in the 1950s and 1960s. Iconic names like Norton and Triumph and BSA. And they all failed remarkably quickly.
And why? Well, they were not able to adjust and adapt to changing market conditions was one thing. And you also had the introduction of a whole new cast of characters who were rising from the ashes of Japanese manufacturing capabilities.
So after World War II, Japan was in ruins, but by the 1960s, you had companies like Honda, and Kawasaki, and Yamaha, and Suzuki all coming to market, finding ways in. And they were able to kill off the British manufacturers remarkably quickly.
Some of those British companies are back today. At least the brands are. You know, Triumph is a notable brand. They make terrific vehicles. It’s not the same company.
Royal Enfield is back. It’s an iconic brand. They’re no longer made in England. They’re made in India. They’ve got a really big market segment so the brand actually has some halo that brought back memories and was able to tie to something iconic. But the companies, to be clear, failed.”
ALEX EFFGEN
Brand can be eternal, but to avoid an afterlife in name only, brand must adapt to diverse conditions and diverse consumers across those conditions.
ROB McISAAC
“Today when you go to the dealership, in many instances you have a color wheel you can choose from and they’re going to build the car to your specs. You no longer are limited.
And I think that’s one response to creating not just just-in-time capabilities, but marketing that is much more oriented to the individual or at least two subsets of cohorts.
When I was in banking, I was surprised by the level of sophistication that existed in our marketing groups around creating different messages for different demographic cohorts. And it wasn’t just a generation as we defined them, but it was actually smaller decrements where it was generally 10-year windows that they looked at.
Because honestly, older Gen Xers look an awful lot like younger Baby Boomers. Younger Gen Xers look an awful lot like older Millennials.
These arbitrary lines are convenient when we’re writing news stories, but aren’t terribly helpful when you’re actually trying to do marketing.
And so having a lot of really good data can remarkably help you as you try and amplify the messages that you’re sending to the people that you want to send them to.”
ALEX EFFGEN
Good data may help define your markets, but it doesn’t mean you can provide a product to meet the needs of each consumer. An electric Mustang might be anathema to a Mustang purist. But can Ford afford to make a million type of Mustangs? No. They must think bimodal.
ROB McISAAC
“I’ve owned BMW sports cars for a very long time. And the ones that they make today, not that interesting to me. They’re bigger, they’re heavier, they’re more powerful, but that doesn’t make them better sports cars. That just makes them bigger and more powerful.
The electronics make them certainly safer for a novice, but uninteresting to somebody who actually enjoys driving a sports car.
The reality of it is they’re not building it for me. They’re building it for my kids. And so I need to think about what it is that I would find interesting if I were to buy a new car.
The same is true in the motorcycle world. When I look at a lot of the new motorcycles that are being built, it’s not terribly interesting. They’re bigger, they’re faster, they’re more powerful. They have all kinds of electronics.
But every once in a while, a manufacturer has come along with what some might view as a retro bike. Where it is stripped down, where it doesn’t have all the nannies and where it’s much more back to what I think of as historic motorcycling. And those are the kinds of things that I do find interesting.
Now for them, as any of those manufacturers, they have to think in a bimodal world.”
ALEX EFFGEN
We started this conversation talking about how BMW read the rule book, and had taken the rule book all the way to the edge in 1976. Fifty years later, the rules have changed, and will continue to change, based on the needs and values of each additional generation. If motorsports intend to contend for our attention, if they want to SCALE their sales with each succeeding generation, then how do they continue to race on Sunday and sell on Monday?
ROB McISAAC
“I suspect that in the future it’s going to be a much more interactive experience that people are going to require. If you’re sitting in the stands today, you probably have your smartphone or your tablet and you’re able to follow along and see things.
Well, maybe there’s more interactivity that will be involved in the future. Maybe people will be able to subscribe to become parts of teams and then they can listen in on things. I think there’s going to be more of that in the future and I think drawing people in is going to be key. I think it’s also going to be an interesting question of how do you turn this into marketing.
If younger cohorts, to the extent they get licenses at all, wait until later to get them, what are you going to do to attract them?
One of the things that has been anathema for traditional motorcycle manufacturers was the idea that we would do anything other than an internal combustion engine driven vehicle. But now many of them have moved to electric vehicles. And then that creates presumably access to a different type of person.
And once again points out that there isn’t a single point of light that you can follow. It’s a whole series of things that you have to be mindful of as you get ready for a future that’s really hard to predict.”
ALEX EFFGEN
The future may be hard to predict, but that’s why innovators keep rewriting the rule book.
ROB McISAAC
“If you don’t read the rule book, if you don’t stay on point, if you don’t understand what’s changing, you can continue to run the old kit, you’ll just wind up being in the back of the pack. And if you’re okay like that, then that’s fine. But that’s not necessarily a winning solution.”
ALEX EFFGEN
Thank you for joining us on The Future Indicative, a podcast produced by me, Alex Effgen, and Indicate Marketing. Our mission is to show what great narratives accomplish for your industry. As mentioned before, the views expressed here are solely our own, but this vehicle has plenty of room for a roadtrip. Hike over to IndicateMarketing.com and hitch a ride. Let’s explore how our humanity can help drive your business growth and market positioning.
On behalf of the BMW 50th Anniversary Celebration at Daytona International Speedway, and Indicate Marketing, I’m Alex Effgen. See you at the finish line.
