First Industry-Wide Campaign Aims to Help Boost Motorcycle and Powersports Retailer Traffic

By: ChrisWorden

Posted: 11/20/09

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To help increase dealership traffic, the Motorcycle Industry Council Board of Directors has launched Revive Your Ride! the first industry-wide promotional campaign designed to help raise consumer awareness about special dealership sales, incentives and activities across the nation. Dealerships can download logos, advertising templates and other promotional items, all for free at www.mic.org/reviveyourride.

Revive Your Ride! can do for powersports retailers what Black Friday does for holiday sales: send riders and those who shop for them to powersports retailers across the country. It is an industry-wide campaign with a unified theme, style and design that can be used by all powersports retailers to help break through today's marketing clutter.

"The theme Revive Your Ride! can mean accessorizing the motorcycle you already have, pulling a machine out of the back of the garage and putting it back on the road or trail, getting some overdue service done, sizing up some fresh riding gear, and, yes, it can mean a new bike or ATV too," said Frank Esposito, member of the MIC Board of Directors and president of Kendon Industries, Inc. "The unified theme, style and design, if used by many dealerships, repeatedly, can collectively cut through today's marketing clutter. We want a clear message to customers that regardless of how much they have to spend, now is the best time to visit their local motorcycle dealer, aftermarket outlet or service shop. The product selection is great right now, the deals are generous and there is plenty of expert dealership staff to help."

Retailers can begin to use the Revive Your Ride! theme and promotional tools now to jump-start the ATV and holiday shopping season. The promotional tools are designed to be simple and flexible, and can be tailored to fit local market conditions and individual dealer needs. The Revive Your Ride! website contains a number of promotional suggestions that dealerships can add to what they are already doing to give customers even more reasons to visit retailers now.

Esposito and the MIC's Board members conceived Revive Your Ride! to help dealers build floor traffic. It was further developed with input from the aftermarket members and is supported by a wide range of association members. A list of actively participating MIC member companies can be viewed on the website. In addition, MIC member agencies, media outlets and others are involved with 'in-kind' support.

"It's built so dealerships can make it work for themselves and make it work for their customers - the ones they already have and the ones they want to gain," said board member Eric Anderson, change agent of Vroom Network. "It's free for everyone to use as they see fit, and we hope it's adopted by many. We think that Revive Your Ride! can offer a marketing boost and help do for powersports retailers what the Superbowl, Thanksgiving and Presidents, Memorial and Labor Day sales events help do for department and grocery stores."

Early participating MIC members include:
Advanstar
Dealernews
GE Money
Kendon Industries
Motorcycle USA
Parts Magazine
Powersports Business
Schiefer Media, Inc.
The Creative Works
Vroom Network

The Motorcycle Industry Council exists to preserve, protect and promote motorcycling through government relations, communications and media relations, statistics and research, aftermarket programs, development of data communications standards, and activities surrounding technical and regulatory issues. It is a not-for-profit, national industry association representing manufacturers and distributors of motorcycles, scooters, motorcycle/ATV/ROV parts and accessories, and members of allied trades such as insurance, finance and investment firms, media companies and consultants.

The MIC is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., with a government relations office near Washington, D.C. First called the MIC in 1970, the organization has been in operation since 1914. Visit the MIC at www.mic.org. Visit Revive your Ride! website at www.mic.org/reviveyourride.