Automotive advertising tends to fall into one of two categories: flashy brand work or tactical and promotional. But, knowing our new millennial target, we couldn’t shout with an ad.

Enter 1903 – A Harley-Davidson Café – a pop-up that was part coffee shop, part brand experience. Named for Harley’s founding year, 1903 was a nod to café racer culture of the 1960s, a movement that has recently surged in popularity with young urban riders.

Located in a downtown Toronto neighbourhood, known for its diversity and craft culture, every detail, from interior design to coffee cups, had to be crafted. Coffee options were named after flagship bikes. ‘The Garage’ hosted wrenching workshops and press events, where visitors could feel the rumble of a Harley by testing out the Jumpstart, a ride simulator.

Wild posters popped up at local handpicked “hipster” locations, printed with one-of-a-kind, handcrafted ink made with real coffee.

We hosted an exclusive launch party, the night before opening day. The event was carefully crafted to appeal to our target. Guests were hand selected based on rigorous research. Since Harley-Davidson had never interacted with this target before, we needed to leverage key influencers to help curate the guest list, encouraging them to share the invitation with their communities to ensure we were connecting with the right people.

Knowing that supporting local is important to this demographic, we partnered with vendors such as a local food truck, and neighborhood breweries.

To ensure national coverage on opening day, we gave top-tier print/online media a ‘first look’ the day before the official opening and offered up H-D Canada’s Managing Director and Karen Davidson of the Davidson family for interviews.

We invited local cameras to secure footage of opening day rush and worked behind-the-scenes with their national affiliates to coordinate syndication coast-to-coast.

• The Café garnered over 50 million impressions—100% positive in tone—surpassing our goal by over 520%

• 76 pieces of editorial coverage was generated for the Café launch, resulting in 27.2 million earned media impressions, surpassing our goal by 240%. Throughout the duration of the riding season,

• Café received national coverage, with 60% of articles being feature stories, including a Toronto Star front-page feature, Business News Network segment and an interview on CBC’s The Exchange

• Harley saw a massive shift in its social following. Their Canadian social media followers aged 35 and under spiked to 53% from 8% following the 1903 opening

• 550 guests within in the target demographic attended the launch party with 482,000 social impressions and 5,750 social engagements seen during event night

• After two years of declining sales, Harley saw a sales increase of 5.5% following the Café launch