Date:19/05/2006 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/05/19/stories/2006051900521102.htm

Back Bad bike, boys or girls?

With competition hotting up, it is all hard-sell these days. A foreign motorbike manufacturer, deciding to live the brand, went to extreme lengths at a recent launch. To emphasise the cool, youth focus of the bike, the launch was in the pub of a five-star hotel. Journalists were stamped with flashy `full throttle' tattoos before being let in. And then the company's top management walked in, in the "bad" biker gear, complete with dark glasses, black T-shirts, and thick, shiny chains. . Hold on, the bike was apparently not targeted at the "bad boys." But, according to one company official, at "boys who want to attract bad girls". "Baad girls," he emphasised, leaving the journalists a bit confused about what exactly he had in mind.

Our Bureau