Team-BHP - KTM brand image challenges | When did it actually start?

This came up to my mind, after I saw KTM unveil their new horizontal and vertical speedometers. I am a KTM owner and I absolutely love the motorcycle. This brand image thing never bugged me, to be honest I never gave a damn about what people thought if I rode a KTM. I loved the bike, I got it and that's about it.

KTM's shoddy brand image in India needs no introduction. It has gone to such an extent that people who genuinely fell in love with a KTM refrain from buying it due to the brand image.

So where did it go wrong? I am absolutely clueless. I have my views to share though.

2012: KTM enters India
I am not sure about the exact date, but this was when KTM entered India. Their bikes were like no other, and technology that was previously unseen in the segments that they were operating in. I absolutely love these 1st gen motorcycles. I never got a chance to ride them but the way they looked itself has made a lasting impression on me.

2017: BS4 Transition
This was when the 2nd gen 390 Duke was introduced and if you ask me, I think this was when the brand image tarnishing started by those not so pleasing boys with irregular colored hair getting their hands on these bikes via easy EMI schemes and what not. The 200 Duke remained the same but with updated color schemes and the 250 Duke was also introduced. Later on a 125 Duke was introduced. The RC also got a color update, and even the RC series remained the same. The most common undesirable riders that I can recall ride these BS4 RC and Duke in 200cc guise.

2020-2023: BS6 Transition
All the bikes received the emission updates along with new colors and features. The Duke 125 and 200 received a generation change. This was where things intensified. The 200 became popular among these undesirable guys. Brand image has been tarnished to a point that it cannot be corrected anymore, unless some miracle happens.

These were my views, but I am very curious as to what other owners have on their minds. Corrective measures can be taken even at this stage IMO, but since Bajaj is only after volumes, this situation looks like it would not improve in the coming years.

Quote:

Originally Posted by saikishor (Post 5857782)

So where did it go wrong? I am absolutely clueless.

I dont have any exact idea at all but like you love the Duke :D
I also don't understand the people who stay away from the Duke due to the bad image - I mean why do you care what other random people on the street think of you and your bike? But I feel most people stay away due to the excessively loud styling which (IMO) has gotten worse over the years

My speculation is that it started with the absolutely reckless riding and stunting youtube videos and then this image was formed.

Young people with bikes are going to do what young people with bikes do. But when KTM sell their bikes as 'ready to race' and yet they (Bajaj more than KTM in India) don't promote racing like how TVS does, they are letting third party stunters and influencers control the narrative on social media. When people squid on TVS bikes, TVS can say, "hey, we give these people a platform to do it safely, it is their fault they did not take it". and wash their hands off any reputational damage.

KTM (not Bajaj's fault here) made it harder for themselves by not releasing their bikes in colours other than a bright orange, making it harder for KTM squids to fly under the radar compared to an apache or a pulsar

Quote:

Originally Posted by saikishor (Post 5857794)

True, even me. I see most of these guys on R15 and MT15. Even before KTM was a thing, I remember seeing such type of guys on R15 V2's. But somehow, Yamaha's brand image has not been affected substantially, as compared to that of KTM.

I suspect this was true sometime between the release of R15v1 and the dukes. There was no reason to squid on Yamahas when KTMs were more powerful for similar money and social media was not prevalent enough before 2013 to make the Yamahas notorious.

Not all hope is lost though. People hate REs with loud exhausts, continental GT squids are already a thing and soon enough we will see squids on gorillas take the heat away from our beloved orange bikes.

It was the most affordable 400cc bike ever made and the most affordable 200cc which basically to me is a replacement to the rx100. Pricing was so aggressive that even many of the old time royal Enfield owners realised their own bike was sold at ridiculous premium for the horrible quality, ride , spares and maintenance and most got their hands on the 390.

This meant accessibility was higher even for those with minimal exposure to big bikes. Add to it the advent of internet, mobile phones and access to social media platforms beyond dialup of BSNL.

"Ready to race" indeed meant it is going to be tested to the fullest. Many alive KTM owners here will agree to the fact that this bike can kick some rear of many big bikes priced almost twice. The first time I got this bike I wanted to see the speedo hit the magic 100 mark and it is not the kmph.

Affordability and performance with minimal experience meant more accidents.

The 150cc are not fast enough to be put in this segment. As more KTM accidents started getting exposed the killer bike tag got attached on its own.

That is one part of the image

The second part is, it is perceived as bike with poor quality and reliability. Thanks to the fact that it was made in india that it started in the back foot for quality and it never came out of that stigma.

The ones who had issues also rode that bike at redline all the time and I personally feel any bike that is ridden like that needs maintenance beyond just adjusting chain and changing oils

I prefer this bad image but made in india bikes at affordable price than changing the image to sell more. Always a KTM fanboy here

My two cents:

1. Affordability: KTM provided the thrill of a superbike at the price of a commuter bike. Due to their affordability, KTM bikes are now in the hands of people who can literally jump into a well to impress girls!

2. The Orange color: The orange color has become a signature color for KTM, just like red for Ferrari and green for Kawasaki. Now when, these riders zoom across their bikes, they can be identified easily due to their orange color, while the bikes of other brands are not easily identifiable.

Particularly in my city, all these riders use KTM,R15 and NTorq.

Last but not the least, no offence to KTM, R15 and Ntorq owners who do not perform all these harakiris and ride their vehicles safely and sensibly.

Every generation goes through this brand image stuff, nothing to worry about so much. When I was in college Yamaha RXZ, RX135 were everyones favourite, by the time I was about to finish college it had soon built bad boy, loud and brash image. There was new kid on the block called Pulsar. Two strokes were dying due to bad boy image, note I am not using the C word here which we use for KTM riders, because genuinely bad boys rode the RX series and not bunch of wannabees.

Every generation goes through this cycle, mostly powerful vehicles of its generation fall victim to it. Only thing thats different would be the definition of bad boys.

Edit: I read some comments that Yamaha never had notorious image. Perhaps the folks commenting the same are too young on this forum. Man! I feel old sometimes. Behold my OG gangster! The amount of times I have been stopped by cops I have lost count. This bike had such notorious image that one look at this vehicle and you are outcast. I also had first gen D390, this one garnered way more attention than D390 at that time.lol:

It's a generational thing, KTM is just the latest 'victim'. It was Dio before that, RX100 and other Yamaha bikes at some point, Fiero 1st gen had quite the reputation once. There are other bikes sold today that have their own unsavory reputations, they just seem anonymous compared to the loud orange stuff. There have been and are parallels in the car world too.

KTM isn't going to change their loud and proud racing identity, I doubt they're going to try and limit sales by demographics. Unless sales in toto become an issue, I doubt KTM will worry who exactly is paying for their bikes.

Riding responsibly is up to a biker, not the logo on their bike.

I agree with what many of you are saying: every generation has its ‘squid bike.’ It’s not the bike’s fault but rather the rider’s fault. Lucrative EMI schemes have made it easy for all kinds of people to access KTMs, and the 125cc and 200cc models are the ones that got abused the most. From 2012 to 2015, I don’t think KTM had any image issues, but post-2016, especially after internet access became widespread in India thanks to Jio, these orange bikes became very popular on social media. A track-ready bike on the road, ridden by immature riders, will always lead to disaster. Yamaha didn’t face this issue as they had a wider range of bikes to offer, whereas KTM mostly had their screaming orange racing machines. If this trend continues, the next victim could be Kawasaki.

Quote:

Originally Posted by saikishor (Post 5858011)

Ok I feel the topic is slightly diverting. I started off with "when" did this diluting start. I was meaning to say with which iteration of KTM bikes did the dilution actually start.

"When" ??? lol:

Okay! Story time!

Late 2012, evening time. I was buying vegetables from a neighborhood store in Bangalore's Jeevan Bhima Nagar area. Note that the floor of the store is mostly at ground level itself, hardly half a step up from the road. As I and a couple other customers were busy hand-picking the best produce, a bike came screaming down the road. It had a new and interesting exhaust note - which we all now instantly recognize as a KTM. I immediately looked up to take note.
The rider came down the road, made a clean 90-degree swooping turn and gunned it straight at the store front, rode half-past into the store and braked to a halt in front of the store owner.

I was like "Wow! Skills" and "Whoa! Moron!" and "Yikes! Gangland hit!" at the same time.

Turns out the rider was best buddies with the store owner.
While the friends exchanged laughter and greetings, and the annoyed customers grunted and shook their heads in displeasure, I was taken in by the sweet OG KTM 200 in the now unmistakable KTM orange. "Duke! 200! Is it better than a Pulsar 200 or a Karizma?" I thought to myself.

Soon the hooligan left the same way he came and the store owner was talking about the rider to another fellow standing near him.
"He appeared from my native a year ago. Penniless. Scared in a big city. Didn't even know how to ride a bicycle properly. Now look at him!", said the store owner, with a cheerful face and a slight hint of displeasure in his tone.

The "Didn't even know how to ride a bicycle properly" bit, stuck in my mind forever.

That was and is what KTM has been to these riders. Skills that were learnt through countless bruises and kilometers and years on Pulsars, took barely weeks on a KTM. In fact, KTMs are so well-engineered that it fools the novice into pushing the limits, thinking that they have absolute infallible control, until the very moment of disaster.

Last year, when my nephew wanted his first new college bike, I suggested a KTM, knowing he was a cautious rider and had been riding his dad's Unicorn for a while. He instantly refused saying his friends call KTMs as "Widow Makers". ROFL, talk about college boys worrying about leaving behind widows. Jokes aside, a few nincompoops and their antics on KTMs have socially dented the brand to some extent. But a KTM is still an amazing machine for mature experienced riders.

So, coming back to when did the dilution begin? It began soon after the bike was launched. It reached a peak alongside social media and now is labelled a "widow maker" by those who don't have "wives". :coldsweat

Meanwhile, I am considering adding the new KTM 200 to my garage! The following is the original 200.