Prior Convictions: Product placement anarchy

Harley Davidson enjoyed a boost in sales when its bikes featured on a popular TV show. But does the upshot work both ways?

We’ve all been there, right? Your ex is back in town, and you realise you’ve still got feelings for each other, so there you are, shagging, while a dead body – your ex’s stalker, who also happens to be an FBI agent, who you’ve just shot in the head, incidentally – lies nearby on the floor. What could be more romantic?

Mind you, he is oozing fluids onto carpet, in the doorway to the en suite, so you’ll have to step over him to get to the bathroom. He’ll still be there when you wake up in the morning, but it’s fine, you’ll find it easy to sleep through that kind of distraction, I’m sure, especially if, like your ex, you’re a surgeon.

Welcome to the ludicrous world of Sons of Anarchy. Have you seen it? Or, more likely, do you remember it? It’s a TV show than ran on FX from 2008 to 2014 and was suggested to me by a subscription video app the other week, based around the tribulations of the eponymous motorcycle club. And boy, do the Sons have tribulations.

They’re a gang, that’s the basic problem. Oh, they call themselves a motorcycle club, they all ride Harley Davidsons around and pretend to fix cars and motorbikes for a living, but really, they’re a criminal gang. Their Vice President and our hero – he of the stalker-headshot-shag-thing – is Jackson Teller, who would like the club to go legitimate; because his dead dad was a soft lad and wanted the same, though was ‘offed’ before it happened. So Jackson is setting about it, even though his stepdad, Clay, the club President, isn’t soft at all, and neither is his mum, Gemma. They both quite like the criminal stuff, like gun running, because it pays well, see, although nobody ever seems to spend any money.

Anyway the criminal shizzle lands them and other club members in all kinds of bother. Like the member whose wife gets shot in the back of the head by, of all people, the club itself, in a case of mistaken identity. ‘Sorry lad, we didn’t mean to shoot your missus. We meant to shoot you, because we thought you’d grassed on us while you were in prison.’ Only he hadn’t. He was a bit cross about his wife being shot, though not cross enough to leave the club, but I suppose hooking up with a porn star before his spouse’s body was barely cold might have had something to do with it. Like I said, it’s absurd.

Obviously, what with it being so ridiculous, I became addicted and binge-watched all seven series recently and thought it was great. But it’s the club’s predilection for Harley-Davidsons that piqued my interest. Harleys are fine if you’re actually a motorbike club, but they’re a daft method of transport for a criminal gang. If you want to take serious firepower when you go for a shootout you have to take a van with you too. You can’t reverse anywhere. You can’t shove a body in the boot. And there’s all that phaffing and pulling on your gloves and helmet if you’re in a hurry, which it turns out gangs often are. Who knew? Plus Harleys aren’t very fast, aren’t very quiet, and you get can knocked off of them quite easily; although that happens less than you’d think.

But the other reason I’m intrigued by the Harley thing is because SoA – I’m so down with the acronyms – arrived just as Harley Davidson sales went down like they’d been shot by a gang member. Well, so did sales of everything fun, really, what with it the being 2007/2008 monetary meltdown, during which Harley’s annual sales dropped from a 350,000 peak in 2006, to closer to 200,000 in 2010.

I don’t think Harley was involved with the production at the start of SoA, but apparently supplied bikes to the series later on. Harley sales rallied at the turn of the decade, heading back up towards 275,000 a year by 2014, when one actor suggested that Sons had “basically saved Harley”. And since the series finished it’s true that sales have been in a gradual decline again, to around 250,000 bikes last year.

But is placement that reinforces a particular image any good if you want to broaden your brand’s appeal? It’s hard to get youngsters onto bikes anyway, but some analysts think they’re particularly uninterested in the Harley image – that only old blokes want to buy and ride them. And if we accept that product placement says good things about a brand, can’t it say bad things too? For all those who do scratch the Harley itch after seeing it on the telly, are there an equal number, or more, who are turned off? If having an Audi makes you feel like Tony Stark, does having a Harley suggest you’re a white trash (their words), aggressive, violent, bit sexist, kinda-racist-but-ultimately-not, drug-running, head-shooting, gun-smuggling, family-killing, ruthless thug?

I don’t know. There’s no way to find out either way, I suppose. But for what it’s worth, I did like the series. And, despite everything, I even like some of the bikes. So maybe one day I’ll get one. Maybe.

I mean, yes, it’s a very nice bike darling, thanks for bringing the brochure home. But I’ve seen SoA, and have you thought about buying a Honda?

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GingerNinja

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