Motorcycles and Market Mix Modelling. MMMM good.

The saying is that good advertising builds sales great advertising builds factories In 1956 Hondaamp8217s Takeo Fujisawa aimed to devastate the competition He wanted to develop a product that was more reliable than gremlin prone British bikes and more accessible than the American Harley Davidsons His vision was far beyond the domestic Japanese market so he committed to a dramatic expansion of production capacity in one of the biggest corporate bets everHis business partner Soichiro Honda was the engineer more interested in engines racing and winning To him the smell of oil was perfume Takeoamp8217s vision of a small reliable scooter that could be easily ridden with one hand was the antithesis of anything found on a racetrack Nonetheless the two partners decided that their visionary design would take them from 3000 bikes a month to 50000 This in a market considered saturated while Hondaamp8217s international sales and distribution had yet to be developedThe key to the design was reliability and ease of use Engineering details included putting the oily chain in a plastic housing to protect the rideramp8217s pants shifting gears didnamp8217t need a clutch amp8220step thoughamp8221 frame kept the centre of gravity low and plastic protection from road debris It had to a transportation appliance not a gearhead hobbyThe American publicamp8217s image of motorcycles was defined in 1953 by Marlon Brando in the film The Wild One The film featured the 600cc Triumph Thunderbird British bikes dominated the market in the 50amp8217s and their makers were smug They believed the Honda Cub wasnamp8217t a real motorcycle and its riders would eventually want to graduate to larger highway and racing oriented products even if the Nortonamp8217s BSAamp8217s and Triumphamp8217s had dodgy electrics were prone to unscheduled maintenance and required riders to be parttime mechanicsBy 1963 the Honda Cub was a success with production running at 1 million units a year but even greater success was to come as Honda launched one of the definitive success stories in advertising Who advertises motorcycles in Life magazine or on the Academy Awards 300000 a minute It was Kihachiro Kawashima who signed off on the media plan amp8220doubting very much whether he would have made the decision if it had been his own moneyamp8221 Not only did US sales take off but redefined who rode motorcycles in the US The Honda Super Cub is still sold globally in 2024 and studied at business schools as the case for creating marketsTodayamp8217s parallel is market mix modelling becoming a marketing measurement appliance Just as the Honda Cub hid all the messy mechanics and focused on ease of use Arima has put all the Bayesian Regression math and data cleaning behind an interface Instead of requiring operators to know Python or R which Google Meridian and Metaamp8217s Robyn do Arima demands a skill set easily within the media planneramp8217s capabilities This opens the use of MMM to many more marketers itamp8217s cheaper easier and more connected to the rest of a cloudbased platforms now in use by marketersAdvertisers have long wanted a simple means to evaluate their crossmedia efforts and connect outcomes into their crossmedia planning The example of how the Honda Cubamp8217s targeted user design demonstrates proves that a redefinition of an old product can dramatically increase its use with new usersPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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Motorcycles and Market Mix Modelling. MMMM good.

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