Federico Minoli on the Ducati brand
06.08.2004 Eight years ago, the Texas Pacific Group investment fund bought Italian motorcycle manufacturer Ducati. A former McKinsey man, Federico Minoli was brought in to restructure the ailing company. To the astonishment of economic experts, the 55-year-old turnaround manager made his first priority the building of a Ducati museum.

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What does it take to make a brand into a myth?
Federico Minoli: Well, to start with, you need a mythical product. But what makes a product mythical? It has to be different, unique. It has to stand for something specific. Then in addition, it needs to be linked to a specific country or region or story.

Can you sum up the three key things that Ducati stands for?
Desmodromic valve adjustment, the sound of the engines and the Italian design.

Who are Ducati's clients?
We prefer not to speak of clients but of fans.

And who does your marketing data identify as being the typical Ducati fan?
When I took over, I wanted to produce a segmentation of the client base. But it didn't work out. The range of clients extends from wealthy private banking clients who park their Ducatis in their living rooms all the way to simple assembly line workers who save up to pay for their Ducatis. We therefore speak about a Ducati clan or tribe. A tribe is made up of people who have something in common. In the center of the settlement is the totem, the Ducati totem in our case. This defines the product, but not the tribe; it is simply the linking element between the individual members of the tribe.

Nevertheless, the profile of the Ducatisti must have changed considerably over the last twenty years, mustn't it?
Twenty years ago, the core attitude was one of fundamentalism: see, I drive a Ducati. It keeps on going, very well; I, and only I, can repair it. The problem with fundamentalists is that there are only a few of them, and they hang on to their motorcycles for a lifetime. The good side of fundamentalists is the extremely strong passion they feel; they can communicate this love, this passion for something specific to other people. We have tried to transfer this fundamentalist passion to a larger group. And I believe we have achieved this to a significant degree.

What does Ducati contribute to this "tribalist" marketing?
Actually not much. The Ducatisti work on our behalf, in a manner of speaking. This is the brilliance of it. To give an example: recently we received major coverage on the front page of the weekend edition of the Daily Telegraph. The report covered the participation of an old Ducati in a vintage rally. In terms of PR, the article was fantastic and priceless. We would never have the money or the profile to be able to influence the placing of such a story. But there the story was, on the front page, because the journalist responsible was a Ducatista.

What measures have you pursued to vitalize the brand myth?
When we took over the company, the factory roof was leaking. Despite this, however, my first decision was to build a museum. The workforce promptly went on strike in response! But the museum was a clear sign of the direction we wanted to follow. Ducati cannot compete with the technical progress of our competitors. Japanese manufacturers have very different options here. In order to justify our premium pricing strategy, we have to offer equivalent technology, but we also have to step up to the plate with the Ducati myth, our uniqueness and our history.

You are now also branching out in the direction of "lifestyle marketing", with, for example, a range of clothing. How much more lifestyle can the Ducati myth bear?
We are really very conservative in this regard. We are not actively pursuing more lifestyle. But lifestyle has already become strongly associated with Ducati, without our having done anything to achieve this. To give an example: one day I received a call from the Warner Brothers studio. The makers of "Matrix" had to have Ducati motorcycles in the film. I said to them, forget it. We don't have the money. Try BMW, they have a budget for expensive film appearances, such as the James Bond film at the time. But the Warner Brothers people replied that they didn't want any money, just eight motorcycles. To which I replied, sorry, but eight motorbikes are a lot of money. We can't just give them away. It went back and forth like that, and in the end they leased four Ducatis. In short, our motorcycles appeared in a cool film because the director wanted them to, not because we were pushing them. Lifestyle comes to us. And that's just because the Ducati brand is a myth.