Harley-Davidsons New Facebook App Allows Fans to Shape H-D Marketing

Harley-Davidson has advanced its “crowdsourcing” marketing strategy to the next phase. The Motor Company announced today Fan Machine, a new app for its Facebook presence. The app is a conduit for fan-submitted marketing ideas.

Harley’s first attempt at culling ideas from its throngs of devoted followers resulted in the recently implemented “No Cages” campaign. Fan Machine will allow Harley to tap into its nearly 2.9 million Facebook fans for new marketing ideas. Through the new app fans can review an advertising brief, submit ideas and vote on ideas from other community members. After selecting and rewarding the winners, Harley-Davidson will work with existing marketing partners to bring the best creative ideas to life.

According to a release Harley is implementing a customer-led business model throughout the company.

While this approach of getting consumers to do some of the heavy lifting for a company’s creative process is quite ingenious, potential users of FM (Fan Machine) should know that the app requires user permission to allow the app to access just about everything about a user’s profile, including, as the app says, allow Fan Machine to post photos, statuses, videos, etc., on the user’s behalf.

If you choose “Don’t Allow” in the popup window, there’s currently no way to see or use Fan Machine. Harley first announced Fan Machine Nov. 7 via Twitter.