Indianapolis Motor Speedway

When the most recognizable name in racing began to examine the prospect of expanding its racing calendar to include motorcycles, it reached out to Hardcard for advice. Hardcard and IMS worked hand in hand to advise on negotiations with the various sanctioning bodies, refine the marketing and sales strategy and assist IMS staff with introductions and integration into the motorcycling community. The results were the largest motorcycle race crowd in U.S. history with strong sales and rave revenues from the industry and fans.

BMW

With the impending launch of the new S1000RR in North America, BMW plans an aggressive attack on the world's largest sportbike market. Looking to maximize that opportunity, BMW hired Hardcard to advise on how best to integrate racing into the marketing platform to highlight BMW's performance characteristics. Hardcard will provide the strategy, budgets, and personnel advice to launch this impressive effort for the 2010 season and drive the greatest return on BMW's marketing investment.

Barber Motorsports Park

Hardcard has a long standing relationship with Zoom Motorsports Management, the official promotional organization for the Barber Motorsports Park – perhaps America's most beautiful road racing facility. At many road racing facilities, motorcycling is the most profitable segment of racing and has the most potential for growth. Zoom's expansion plans included prudently adding a world championship event to its existing schedule of events, so it hired Hardcard to help assess opportunities. Hardcard provided advice on the structure of agreements, intelligence on the decision makers within the respective Championships, and advice on negotiations, operations, and budgeting. Ultimately, Hardcard advised Zoom to pass on the offers developed, as our assessment was that the event would not be profitable for Zoom. Subsequently, Hardcard was retained by Zoom to expand its reach into the motorcycle market and increase revenues from the motorcycle industry.

Harley Davidson

When iconic brand Harley Davidson sought a new image for the roll-out of its Muscle line this past fall, it looked to Hardcard to create the right environment. Hardcard worked with Harley Davidson management to find the right image, venues and staging in the right geographic markets to support the Muscle's new identity. By attracting key opinion leaders to the right setting, the Muscle image was born to be wild.

Bell Helmets

Bell Helmets was an motorsports industry icon throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, though, the company took a wrong turn by licensing the Bell name to third parties and quality and image suffered. Recently, Bell regained control over its brand and sought to relaunch the street motorcycle line with the new Bell Star, hiring Hardcard to organize a marketing and public relations campaign designed to regain its position as a leader in innovation, safety and styling. Hardcard delivered a product launch, athlete endorsements and PR events that quickly led to a consumer sell out of the product's initial production.

As an element of this strategy, Hardcard introduced Bell to another of its clients – Toyota – who was looking for a unique and historical element to give credence to its long-term commitment to motorcycling. Hardcard designed and implemented a museum-quality display of historic Bell helmets shown at the International Motorcycle Show series in conjunction with Toyota. More than 500,000 attended these shows where the Bell display added motorcycle authenticity to the Toyota brand and attracted a large audience to the Toyota display keeping them engaged for a greater-than-average period of time. A huge success for all involved.

Red Bull

Red Bull has always been a leader in product sampling with their innovative Wings Team. But when the brand had trouble delivering their sampling teams' vehicles into busy city centers, they looked to Hardcard to help with a more maneuverable, two-wheeled solution.

Hardcard developed a mobile, urban sampling program by partnering with Piaggio Group North America and their Vespa brand. Hardcard helped implement a Motorcycle Safety Foundation scooter-training program for the Wings Team and secured scooters, safety gear and product-carrying accessories for the program. The two-wheeled initiative was a success as it helped Red Bull achieve better sampling penetration in inner-city Manhattan, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.

Campos Creative Works/Toyota

When Campos Creative Works sought to win the bid for activation of Toyota's long-standing sponsorship of the International Motorcycle Show series, they looked to Hardcard to help develop a business-winning proposal. And that's just what the collaboration between CCW and Hardcard did—win the contract to deliver Toyota's message to the motorcycling audience with authenticity. The subsequent CCW/Hardcard program delivered the highest measured level of consumer engagement and hand-raisers that the sponsorship had ever produced.