CI.N Podcast: Adam Tranter on enhancing cycling’s image in the media

This month we are delighted to welcome West Midlands Cycling and Walking Commissioner, plus Fusion Media CEO Adam Tranter to the CyclingIndustry.News’ Podcast.

A former bike racer who transitioned into the bike industry’s media and PR landscape, Adam is nowadays best known as the bridge between the cycling industry and advocacy worlds. Having brought forward the #BikeIsBest voluntary campaign, as well as having served in numerous roles to promote and deliver upon active travel goals, Adam is often found fighting the corner of active travel in order to better our communities.

Speaking to our host, Sean Lally, Adam covers ground ranging cycling’s media image, the positive impact of safe infrastructure on active travel and how to improve dialogue with those in power who may wish to make changes at street level but fear a vocal minority opposition.

On the latter point he reveals: “My experience of working with actual policy professionals and elected officials is that they do know what the solutions are, but they desire to make it interesting and fun to appeal to different audiences. Ultimately, and this is a non-cycling example, onshore wind is not that interesting to the majority people, but the idea that there might be flying taxis in your cities perhaps is. That’s how the media system works and sometimes you have to play to that. I actually think we could learn from some of this in the cycling industry, we are quite modest sometimes. You’ve seen some brands like Vanmoof do some interesting stuff, playing that future gazing game, producing concept vehicles. Sometimes it plays to our advantage to play into those brilliantly gimmicky things that car industry has been good at.”

Spotting an opportunity has been part of the key to Tranter and his media agency’s success. On this subject he suggests that seizing and owning a moment can prove very successful for businesses wishing to scoop a marketing win.

“There’s something to recognise in human interest stories. We work with Raleigh and we found a guy who purported to be country’s oldest paper boy. We saw a local newspaper clipping, I think he was in his late eighties and talking about retiring. We rang the shop and said ‘no, don’t retire, get an eBike and keep going for a bit longer and he loved it’. Thereafter, the feel good story was in almost every national newspaper. It was a very simple story to achieve; it just came down to being a human interest piece.”

To tune in to the Adam Tranter podcast in full, hit play below, or if you prefer, head to our Spotify.