Tribal Marketing: Ducati

Ducati is a pretty old brand. It was founded in 1926. As my friends at Ninja Marketing write, the company was close to folding when Federico Minoli, representing Texas Pacific Group, a US investment fund, bought it in 1996. Minoli, a former McKinsey consultant, increased production from 12,000 to more than 40,000 today. The company is located in Borgo Panigale, near Bologna.

Minoli, who left Ducati in 2007, bet on the concept of tribe, appointing a tribe director vs. a marketing manager, who oversees a staff of 30.

Knowing that a mass marketing approach would have been too expensive for the niche brand, Ducati engaged word of mouth from tribe members. The company organizes events -- Ducati Weekends and the World Ducati Week -- with a real tribe of 200,000 Ducati owners and a virtual tribe of 12 MM visitors yearly to the site Ducati.com.

Tribe members, fans, spread the word about the brand. Ducati received front page media coverage on the weekend edition of the Daily Telegraph for a gathering of vintage Ducati, for example. The noteworthy part of the coverage is that it was not obtained through a public relations effort. The journalist is a member of the Ducati Tribe.

With 600 Ducati owners clubs, 40 of which have been around for more than 5 years, you have owners and people passionate about the brand weighing in on the brand experience. All unique, they are part of Desmo Owners Club, DOC. Fans can create Ducati t-shirts, and the Internet gives them an opportunity to gather in person. For example, many from the club in Rome participate to the meet up in Dayton, Florida.

Ducati's community is useful for communications and for crowdsourcing. Recently they asked what makes a Ducati authentic and noted there are four elements:

• the L-shapes cylinders
• the trusses on the steel pipes
• the engine's roar (patented)
• the Desmodromic drive (a Ducati exclusive)

These are the elements common to race Ducati. There is another consideration when you have such a passionate community.

As Gianluca Diegoli explained in a recent interview (Italian), fans may hijack your brand. When the community contributes to the creation of the brand, they may get upset when the company makes a decision that in their eyes contradicts the traditions the community built around it. 

Many of the community boards and forums are managed and created entirely by fans without intervention from the company. If you search for Ducati social media outposts, you will find many accounts with a local flavor, especially in the US.

However, Ducati has an official blog, Desmoblog, and official outposts on Facebook, Twitter, and a YouTube channel, where it is gathering velocity. The Facebook fan page has 100,000 fans, who are truly engaged, as we learned a few months ago through a study by FrozenFrogs. These outposts, when well integrated with company digital assets, can indeed generate greater impact on sales with observable metrics.

As Diegoli explains in the interview, the company has a mechanism to involve the various verticals inside the organization, so they can respond to questions and join conversations. It's also good to let your engineers see what issues customers are facing, so they can think about how to improve models.

If you want to learn more about the secrets of Ducati, you can visit their plant in Borgo Panigale. The museum Minoli built helps showcase the craftsmanship of their beautiful rides and is there for fans to learn about the story of Ducati, which is what differentiates the brand beyond pure technology.

Many of the tribe members are Ducati employees who have the opportunity to get a seat at a Grand Prix Motors race -- where 600 out of the 4,000 the company seats are taken by staff. This is critical for building a tribe with customers, you need to have an internal team that is as or more passionate about the product than they are.

Right now, that team includes a few who blog, participate in forums, and in other social media outposts. Eventually, the whole organization will be well served by integrating listening and participation or collaboration with fans as part of their work lives.

It's easy to see what made this customer tribe tick. I don't own a Ducati and I could see myself as member of the tribe. The key here is passion for riding a high performance -- and if I may say so -- beautiful motorcycle. The organization is on the way to catching up with its fan base online.

What elements of your product or service would engender this kind of passion and loyalty? Are you still resisting the call to participate in social media outposts by providing content to your fans, or highlighting their content?

[post based on Ninja Marketing's case study. Image by BOSSoNE0013]

Comments

[Kemestry]

Great post, thank you Valeria!:)

[Eric]

I think what's interesting to think about is how there are so many different types/models of Ducati, but the four aspects that make the brand authentic are universal to all of those models. So, even though the customers might own very different products the brand loyalty lies within a set of characteristics that is shared by the entire tribe.

I think that is something to think about, and can be applied to other brands.

Thanks for the read.

Eric

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Kemesty - thank you for stopping by.

@Eric - finding the universal conversation starters and the common ground between customers and brands pays off in terms of stimulating loyalty and building a fan base.

[Eric Williamson]

Really great case study. Thanks for sharing it, and wrapping it in such a wonderful article/ post.

Was there anything in the case study that explained how Minoli knew he had an untapped resource in his customers? Was this a situation where this tribe already existed ...and the structure had been organically developed by the community & he was the first to tap into it OR did he see that he had a lot of loyal and vocal customer advocates that were all acting independently and needed a degree of organization/structure?

There sounds like a lot of similarities with the tribe structure to what you might find with Harley Davidson. If he did have a hand in developing the structure (as opposed to it being community built) was HD a model?

Love your blog, great post. Thx.

[Jessica Murray]

This is a fantastic post and I especially love the quote how Ducati used their fans to help evolve their brand.

I used to own a Ducati and I'm a diehard fan!

[Carolyn Ann]

Oh yeah... I LOVE my Duc! 2006 Ducati Monster. Red. It's worthy of the racetrack and MOMA.

I don't have much fondness for the maintenance bills, though.

The 90 degree V-Twin is a classic design; it's a lot smoother than the 42 to 54 degrees of many other V-twins. There's a misconception that the desmodromic valve system is unique. It's a rarely used system, but it's actually a lot more common than people think. Actually, I was just reading about the Ceccato Twin-Cam, single 75cc cylinder, racer that Fabio Taglioni - he designed the original 90 deg. V-twin for the Ducati 750GT (early/mid 1970's) - designed the engine for. He had the basic desmodromic principles down in 1949! There was a pre-war German bike, I think, that also used desmodromic valves.

The Ceccato can be seen in the May/June '10 issue of "Motorcycle Classics"; you can see 3 (!) pictures of one if you search for "ceccato motorcycle" in Flickr. :-)

The ladder/trellis frame of the bike is its secret - rigid and light, it provides a fantastic platform to hang that amazing engine from. It is, however, an awful thing to keep clean! That being said, I'd put my '06 Monster in the bedroom and call it art, but someone I married won't let me. :-(

One of the reasons, a fading reason I think, that people get into Duc's is the same one I did: Mike Hailwood's come-back win, on Ducati 900 at the Isle of Man TT, in 1979. I watched it on the evening news, and it left an indelible memory. I *wanted* a Ducati! Skip forward a few years, and I was doing a bit of carpentry at some medical offices on Broadway, in the lower 20's, (in Manhattan! Almost forgot to mention that) and someone used to park a black Ducati Monster at the corner of Broadway and 19th. I'd spend my lunch half-hour just looking at that bike. Another few years later, I got my Ducati.

One Ducati, and four years later, it can still set my pulse racing, just thinking of taking it a for ride.

Mine's off the road at the moment; a lack of funds and a couple of major problems all spell "no ride". :-( I've heard the new engines are better, and cheaper to maintain! I've never heard anyone say they're as cheap as some Japanese bikes, or a Harley, to maintain, though.

(I'm riding two other bikes that also have "tribes": a Vespa, and a Royal Enfield. The fan clubs are just as enthusiastic for those bikes! Different bikes, different experiences, same enthusiasm. :-) )

(If you want a Ducati, there's a dealer in northern NJ, the one in mid-Jersey having recently closed, and I think the one in Manhattan is still going.) :-)

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Eric - that's a very good question, causality. I shall connect with my contacts in Italy and see if I can dig a little deeper for you. I agree, it would be interesting to learn about what prompted the strategy in the first place.

@Jessica - I wish I did own one of those beauties!

@Carolyn Ann - a promise is a promise and I wanted to bring back the Ducati brand to this community. Love Vespa, of course I grew up with it -- and it was a whole lot more affordable for me. It's interesting how there's always a personal story that creates an emotional bond with brands.

[CASUDI]

I've always been fascinated by "tribe marketing", having years ago been struck by the "airstream" loyalty tribe phenomenon, which was all created prior to the internet or 'social media'. (Airstream are shiny aluminium vacation trailers, in case you dont know them) The inventor of the product AND the culture or tribe was a certain Wally Byam: his dream; to build the perfect travel trailer. One that would move like a 'stream of air'. One that would be light enough to be towed by anyone in a standard automobile. One that would provide first-class living accommodations anywhere in the world. The first Airstream trailer was built over 70 years ago, and with it was born yet another dream; a dream of new freedom, new places, new experiences, and new friendships. It was a dream so powerful, so enduring, it did far more than create a new way of travel; it created a new way of life, shared by thousands of families. And the tribe of Airstream is still going strong today (in fact Airstreams have become 'retro-cool').

Yes, I do think the Ducati 'tribe' has been modeled on Harley Davidson, and I think Harley Davidson modeled theirs on Airstream, and not unintentionally! The first time I saw Ducati en masse outside Italy was at the Concorso Italiano show during Pebble Beach week sometime in the mid 1990's. It was an impressive line up, all colors, and many different models. I was especially taken with the 'fly yellow' ones, and imagined black leathers with yellow piping and emblems as an eye catching ensemble for me to wear :-) That must have been (now looking back) their target intro to the American Public. Later my awareness was piqued when Ducati of Seattle opened. Coincidentally, I happened to pass through the catacombs of their building not too long ago enroute to viewing a hidden car collection (thanks DeWitt!). They are huge; much more than meets the eye looking at their storefront.

Would you say these three tribes (or cultures) were all created with an idea of "personal freedom" in mind? Is the iPhone a 'tribe' already, and is it also based on 'personal freedom'? Or does it just have lots of fans? And is there a difference? Apologies in advance; as I am asking questions rather than answering....... but thought you might have some interesting insight..........

This was a really yet another fabulous and enjoyable post! @CASUDI

[Valeria Maltoni]

Good background information, Caroline. Thank you for sharing it with us. I had no appreciation of the Airstream background and story. It does make sense.

Personal freedom is a powerful calling. My take is that iPhone has fans, although I would not trade mine in for a BlackBerry, those gadgets are a pain to use. Thinking that iPhones and Apple products have tipped into mainstream while they still have many evangelists from the original tribe. Would be curious to learn what others think about your excellent questions.