Katy Perry's new single drops a gift in Harley-Davidson's lap

Harleys in Hawaii has been streamed and viewed millions of times, by a demographic the motorcycle maker has had a hard time reaching

Katy Perry went for a joy ride in Hawaii and came back with a song that should have Harley-Davidson dancing.

Last month, Ms. Perry released Harleys in Hawaii,a song inspired by a tropical idyll with her fiancé, the actor Orlando Bloom. Within two weeks, it had been streamed 20 million times on Spotify, and the accompanying music video—which features the pop star as both a rider and a passenger on Harley bikes—had been watched over 12 million times.

Many brands now spend as much on product placement with social media influencers as they do on advertising. Ms. Perry is a heavyweight on social media, with over 100 million followers on Twitter and 80 million on Instagram. But all Harley-Davidson did in exchange for the enormous exposure to her fan base was provide motorcycles for the video.
 

While Ms. Perry may not strike you as a typical Harley customer—spoiler alert: she’s not—the company has long acknowledged that it must replace its aging male customer base; younger riders in general, and women in particular, are a major marketing focus. Harley had been banking on a new electric bike, the LiveWire, but it was recently forced to halt production to address a charging issue.

 “We rented a Harley because we were just there for a few days,” she said. “I can remember specifically where I was, the street corner I was at in Oahu, and turning that corner and whispering to Orlando I’m going to write a song called ‘Harleys in Hawaii.’”

She didn’t just write the song. She hired a coach to teach her how to ride a motorcycle for the music video. Harley-Davidson didn’t know anything about Ms. Perry’s newfound motorcycle affinity until after the song had been recorded.

 “We found out in the last week of June through her record label, and the video was shot in early July,” said Jenny Lowney, who manages the company’s product placements in film and television and with social media influencers.

The combined effect of Ms. Perry’s music video, a making-of video and several other short videos shot in the Harley-Davidson museum in Milwaukee—not to mention a cascade of posts on her Instagram and Twitter accounts—amounts to an incredible social media influencer campaign that the beleaguered motorcycle maker got virtually free.
 

“We worked with our local dealer on Kauai to get bikes for the music video, and that’s really all we provided,” Ms. Lowney said. (Harley-Davidson also paid what it describes as a “nominal fee” to Universal Music Group for digital assets—photos and video clips—for use in its own social media channels.) Sales have been sliding for Harley. Last year, for the second straight year, motorcycle sales in the United States were down 10 percent from the year before, and through the first nine months of 2019, domestic sales were off more than 5 percent from the same period of 2018.

At this point, it’s still impossible to say what the exposure to countless 13- to 21-year-old women will be worth to the 116-year-old motorcycle maker. But we gave it a shot, speaking with the leaders of three top agencies specialising in influencer marketing. “They’re extremely lucky,” said Mae Karwowski, the founder and chief executive of Obviously. “The sheer amount of content that she’s created around Harley, with a clear positioning that this is a new feminist symbol—we talk a lot about authenticity in influencer marketing, and it’s really clear that she’s passionate about this.”

Ms. Karwowski’s math was stunning. “If you just look at how much Katy would make for paid placements on her social channels,” she said, “I think it would be upwards of $40 million, and that doesn’t even factor in the value of all the streams on Spotify, or the 11,000 fan posts tagged #HarleysinHawaii.”

Mike Craddock, the chief of Kairos Media, was more conservative. “The product integration is worth in the low seven figures in our opinion across the board,” he wrote in an email. Joe Gagliese, a co-founder of Viral Nation, which describes itself as a “global influencer marketing agency,” provided the lowest estimate of all, at “a million plus.”
 

The wide range of estimates illustrates the degree to which this branch of marketing remains an inexact science. But all three experts agreed that the motorcycle company should leverage the exposure to build long-term brand awareness among Ms. Perry’s fans. 

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