Latest / Community Marketing with Fexingo: Discord, Slack Groups, and Brand Communities / How Harley-Davidson Turned Riders Into a 1.4 Million Member Community
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to talk about one of the oldest and most misunderstood brand communities in the world. It started in 1983, before the internet existed. It has 1.4 million paying members. And it's essentially a motorcycle club that a company runs. Luna: You're talking about Harley-Davidson's H.O.G. — the Harley Owners Group. Lucas: Exactly. And if you look at most marketing conversations today, everyone's obsessed with Discord servers and Slack groups and Substack chats. But Harley built something that's been running for over four decades, with almost no digital infrastructure for most of its life. It's worth understanding what made it work. Luna: Well, and I think people forget how radical this was. In the early 1980s, Harley was nearly bankrupt. The brand was associated with outlaw biker gangs. They were losing market share to Japanese motorcycles that were cheaper and more reliable. Lucas: Right. The turnaround story is famous — the 1983 tariff on imported motorcycles over 700cc gave them breathing room. But the real strategic bet was: how do you make customers feel like they belong to something bigger than a product? The H.O.G. membership cost about $45 a year back then. You got a magazine, a pin, a patch, and the right to join a local chapter. Luna: And the chapter part is key. Harley didn't try to centrally organize rides or events. They let local dealers sponsor chapters, and members elected their own officers. It was decentralized before decentralization was a buzzword. Lucas: That's the part most brands get wrong. They try to control the community. Harley understood that if the community felt corporate, it would kill the authenticity. The chapters have their own bylaws, their own ride schedules, their own charity events. The company provides the framework — the magazine, the national rally, the membership card. But the actual belonging happens at the local level. Luna: What's the retention data on this? I remember reading that H.O.G. members keep their bikes significantly longer than non-members. Lucas: Harley has historically said that H.O.G. members own their bikes for an average of seven years, compared to about three years for non-member owners. And the repurchase rate is something like 50% higher. So the membership program isn't a profit center — it's a retention engine. And when you factor in lifetime value, that $45 membership fee is trivial compared to the incremental revenue from keeping someone in the ecosystem. Luna: But $45 is cheap. How do they keep members engaged year after year? I've been in some brand communities that feel like ghost towns after the initial excitement. Lucas: A few things. One: the annual rally. Harley's big event is the one in Sturgis, South Dakota, but the company also runs its own rallies — like the one in Laconia, or the international rally that rotates countries. These are massive social gatherings. Tens of thousands of people. They create a peak experience that reminds you why you're part of this thing. Two: the magazine — H.O.G. Tales, they call it now — profiles real members, their rides, their stories. It's not a product catalogue. Three: the chapter rides. If you're in a decent-sized city, there's probably a ride every weekend. You show up, you ride, you have coffee. It's low-friction social bonding. Luna: And it's not just about riding, right? There's a whole charity dimension. H.O.G. chapters are huge fundraisers for local causes. That gives the community a purpose beyond the product. Lucas: Exactly. The 'we ride for those who can't' ethos, the Toys for Tots runs, the veteran support rides. That purpose layer is what transforms a customer group into an actual community. If you're just gathering to talk about a product, that's a fan club. If you're gathering to do something meaningful together, that's a community. Harley understood that intuitively. Luna: So what can a modern digital brand learn from a motorcycle company from the 1980s? Because I think a lot of community managers would say 'well, we don't have physical products, we can't do rides'. Lucas: The principle transfers. Find the shared activity that's bigger than your product. For a software company, that might be user groups that share best practices. For a fitness brand, it's group workouts. The specific mechanism doesn't matter — what matters is that the community has a reason to gather that doesn't require your product to be the center of attention. Luna: Harley also had a challenge in the early 2000s that I think is relevant. They got too focused on attracting younger, more diverse riders, and the existing community felt alienated. There was a backlash. Lucas: Right. In 2020, under then ceo Jochen Zeitz, Harley announced a restructuring that included discontinuing the 'Live to Ride' slogan and some other heritage elements. There was a lot of friction. The community felt like the brand was chasing trends instead of honoring its core. It's a tension every brand community faces: how do you evolve without betraying the people who built the culture? Luna: And that's actually the hardest lesson. A community is not a marketing channel you can pivot. It's a group of people with their own identity. If you try to rebrand the community, you're telling them who they are is wrong. Lucas: Exactly. Harley's community survived that period because it was decentralized. The local chapters didn't care much about corporate messaging. They kept doing their rides. So the brand survived the brand crisis because the community was resilient. That's a feature, not a bug. Luna: I want to ask about the economics. How big a revenue driver is H.O.G. itself beyond retention? Lucas: It's not huge directly. Membership fees probably generate around $60-70 million annually. But the indirect value is enormous. The parts and accessories business — which is high-margin — is heavily driven by H.O.G. members customizing their bikes. The apparel business too. And the referral effect: members recruit new riders. Harley's data from a few years ago showed that over 40% of new buyers came through a referral from an existing rider, and most of those referrals happened organically through H.O.G. events. Luna: So it's a marketing engine that costs almost nothing to run. The members do the marketing. Lucas: And they do it because they want to. That's the holy grail. The community isn't a cost center or a campaign. It's a genuine social structure that happens to benefit the brand. The mistake most marketers make is treating community as a tactic — 'let's start a Facebook group and post three times a week'. Harley treated it as a product. They invested in the experience: the magazine quality, the rally production, the chapter support. It's not cheap to do well, but the ROI is measured in decades, not quarters. Luna: If these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used or thought about differently, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Lucas: Yeah, it's the listener support that lets us keep this ad-free and dig into the real strategy behind things like Harley's H.O.G. Instead of rushing through a surface-level take. Luna: Exactly. So back to what makes this model hard to copy — what's the single biggest barrier for a brand trying to build something similar today? Lucas: Patience. Harley didn't hit 1.4 million members overnight. It took 15 years to get to a million. Most brands give up after six months if they don't see engagement metrics ticking up. But community is a compound interest game. The value grows as the network gets denser. The 10,000th member is more valuable than the 100th because they have more people to ride with. That density takes time. And you can't buy it with ads. Luna: There's also the governance question. Harley basically outsourced chapter leadership to volunteers. That's risky. You're trusting people with your brand. Lucas: Absolutely. But they mitigate it through the dealer network. Dealers are the local anchor. They sponsor the chapter, provide space for meetings, and can intervene if something goes off the rails. It's a franchise model applied to community. The dealers have skin in the game because they sell bikes and service to these members. So they naturally police the quality. That's a structure most brands don't have. Luna: What about the digital piece? Harley has a member app now, and they have a H.O.G. website. But the core is still offline. Is that a weakness? Lucas: I'd argue it's a strength. Digital communities are great for convenience, but they often lack the emotional stickiness of a physical gathering. When you've ridden 200 miles with someone, had a meal together, helped fix a breakdown on the side of the road — that bonds you in a way a Slack message never will. Harley's community is high-stakes, high-engagement by design. The product itself — a motorcycle — creates shared risk and shared adventure. Not every brand can replicate that. But the principle of creating high-stakes shared experiences is universal. Luna: Give me an example of a non-motorcycle brand that does something similar. Lucas: REI's co-op model is probably the closest. You pay a lifetime membership fee, you get dividends, and you can participate in local outings and classes. But REI's community is more transactional. Harley's is tribal. Another example is the running brand community — like November Project, which started as a free fitness group and now has chapters in dozens of cities. That's a grass-roots model that's not owned by a brand, but it shows the power of local, recurring, physical gatherings. Luna: So the lesson for marketers might be: think about what your customers could do together that has nothing to do with buying your product. Then build the structure for them to do it. Lucas: Exactly. And then get out of the way. The best communities are slightly out of the brand's control. That's scary for a marketing department that wants attribution and KPIs. But the brands that let communities breathe — like Harley, like Lego with its adult fans, like Apple with its user groups in the 90s — they end up with something that no ad campaign can buy. Luna: One more thing: Harley's community has a dark side too. There have been issues with exclusivity, with some chapters being less welcoming to women or minority riders. How does a brand handle that when the community is semi-autonomous? Lucas: It's a real challenge. Harley has tried to promote diversity through initiatives like 'Women Riders Month' and partnerships with groups like the 'Litas' — a women's motorcycle collective. But you can't mandate inclusivity in a volunteer-led chapter. The company can set expectations, provide training, and cut ties if a chapter violates the code of conduct. But it's messy. That's the cost of authenticity — you get the good and the bad. The alternative is a sanitized, controlled community that feels fake. Most brands choose the fake route because it's safer. But then they don't get the magic either. Luna: So the trade-off is real: control versus soul. Lucas: Exactly. And Harley chose soul. That's why after 40 years, H.O.G. is still the gold standard for brand communities. It's not perfect. But it's real. And in marketing, real is the hardest thing to manufacture.