Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/711372
26 • August 15, 2016 • Powersports Business ATV/UTV www.PowersportsBusiness.com off-road recreational space, so I think telling people it's Bad Boy Off Road — at least at this point in our history — is very important," Col- lins said. FULL INVESTMENT Though all of these elements were revealed at one time, Collins explained that they had been in thoughtful devel- opment for a long time. The Stampede — and other vehicles yet to be revealed — had been in the works for years, and development of the new name, logo and website took 12-18 months to complete. T e x t r o n h a s n o t only invested in these elements, but in manu- facturing as well. The company built a new 600,000-square-foot manufacturing facility adjacent to its current Textron Specialized Vehi- cles headquarters in Augusta, Georgia, for pro- ducing Bad Boy vehicles. " W e ' v e b e e n i n Augusta since 1954. We're very proud of our roots here. Augusta's home to us, and we're very proud to be able to stand up a new facility ,basically doubling our footprint. That brings our total footprint to about 1.2 million square feet of manufacturing space here," Collins said. He added, "When you look at us, and you look at other brands, we're making investments right here in the good old U.S. of A. And that's what we are, we're a U.S. company making the investments here, building our prod- ucts here. You see the branding piece and the product piece, but you have to back this with good manufacturing and good service, and we're doing that here in the new manufacturing facility here in Augusta." Bad Boy is also investing in media coverage and advertising. With the Stampede being its first vehicle that was purposefully developed to reach recreational, ag and farm consumers, Bad Boy has some ground to make up in name recognition with those groups. To that end, Bad Boy hosted three separate media events in the lead-up to the Stampede release, each catering to consumer editors in their respective markets — recreational, farming/ag and hunting. "We've had a pretty steady flurry of articles that have come out reviewing the Stampede, all very favorable, and obviously we're doing some advertising in those trusted publications as well," Collins said. The media buy includes single page and spread advertisements in a variety of consumer publications. The brand has also purchased TV spots around weather forecasts and channels for farmers, hunting and outdoors program- ming for that group and on ESPN and other sports shows and channels for the recreational demographic. Each print, digital and TV ad will be catered to the audience that Bad Boy is trying to reach through each specific medium. "You'll never see a recreational ad featur- ing a vehicle towing a trailer for ag or farm purposes. It's authentic. We speak to that consumer, so it's out in Moab; it's out really using that vehicle how they normally would," explained Warren Johnson, director of Mar- ket & Strategy, Consumer. "Same thing with hunting; you won't find a hunting ad in a rec publication. Vice versa, you won't find a rec ad in a hunting publication, so we want to speak authentically to that audience." Bad Boy is also being thoughtful with its in-person demo activities. Ride & Drives are planned throughout the riding season in vari- ous locations across the U.S. The first, which was Memorial Day week- end at Durhamtown in Union Park, Georgia, went well. "It was a good learning experience for us, very successful. We had a good amount of traf- fic come over," Johnson reported. Demo riders were arriving in their own side- by-sides, ATVs and motorcycles and jumping into the Stampede to get a feel of the newest Bad Boy model. "When we go out to our events, we bring the right-sized presentation, so it's not just a couple E-Z UPs and some vehicles. We've got a whole tractor-trailer out there, a full awning, a real immersive experience," Johnson said. BAD BOY CONTINUED FROM PAGE 22 See Bad Boy, Page 27 JOHN COLLINS WARREN JOHNSON Bad Boy introduced its first ATV, the Onslaught, earlier this year.