Sons Of Anarchy Vrs Harley Davidson – Round One

Oh dear it would seem there’s no end to the woes of Harley Davidson.

Flagging sales and financial problems have dogged it of late and now one of the best advertising opportunities the company had, has had enough of getting nothing in return.

On his Twitter page series writer Kurt Sutter issued the stunning announcement that Harley’s would no longer be used on the show due to poor response from HD and bootleg SOA merchandise being sold through HD outlets.

His exact tweets were;

- SOA has boosted HARLEY sales and we get next to nothing in return. now i find harley shops are selling bootleg soa gear. fuck you HD usa.

- next season, SOA upgrades to VICTORY, the other great american bike. i’ll make a story point about it, start to put a dent in the HD market.

If he’d said this in a fit of rage at what he sees as an unfair situation he hasn’t deleted the posts, but has since tweeted a slight retraction to clam the issue;

- Okay so I probably won’t pull them off harleys,that’ll hurt the show, I just hate when big companies throw their monopolistic weight around.

However despite this tweet following two hours after the previous ones the damage appears to have been done, with disgruntled fans making the pitch for Victorys, Indians, or customs to take over two-wheeled duties on the show.

While it may be a few idiot shop owners selling bootleg gear and not HD themselves sanctioning such practices (hopefully) the lack of reciprocal promotion of the show by HD is ridiculously inept PR.  Which ever chimp is wearing the Harley CEO hat currently should pass it along.

Follow http://twitter.com/sutterink for more developments

Many thanks to The Borg, http://twitter.com/The_BORG for the heads up on the story.