Harley was seen as a bike brand for white men over 50. The Canadian motorcycle community admired the brand’s iconic history, but they weren’t riding the bikes. So the company was on a mission to build up its rider base.

In 2016, the brand brought in younger riders with the launch of a Harley themed café. In 2017, it sought to tackle the diversity issue.

Harley’s 100th year in Canada presented a celebratory milestone to showcase a brand and rider base as varied as Canada. Harley needed to create a breakthrough, integrated program to provoke a more diverse rider mix to consider Harley while staying top of mind with its core riders.

The company sought to create the first foreign exchange for bikers. So the team created a 12-part documentary series called Common Ground, which was a foreign exchange of bikers. It invited Harley riders from New Zealand, Mexico and India to Canada, and paired them with riders from Nova Scotia, Quebec and Alberta.

A documentary crew followed them as they ventured on a six-day journey across Canada, visiting communities, meeting people and taming diverse landscapes. Starting as strangers, they forged bonds through the common ground that connects them: riding.

Every ride was promoted through short- and long-form content, shared by the riders and on the company's social platforms. Instream social videos along with canvassing, Instagram story promotions and wild postings drove the social campaign’s awareness. Common Ground and its supporting content were housed on HDCommonGround.com, while CRM initiatives nurtured leads to retarget active followers.

The social campaign quickly gathered mainstream media interest. Discovery Canada showcased Common Ground in a one-hour primetime show. A total of 475,000 Canadians tuned into the weekend airing, exceeding coveted live sports programming like Toronto FC, which had generated 93,000 views on similar networks in 2017.

Further to that, a live-synced Instagram story shared behind-the-scenes content resulting in over 757,000 impressions, with a unique reach of over 576,000 viewers.