How industry labels have scored with out of the box marketing ideas
While marketing with your favourite trade magazine may be the best way to target the bike industry, when it comes to the consumer does it pay to be creative? CI.N looks at some of the best out of the box thinking and asks how effective guerrilla campaigns can be…
The bike industry’s progressive minds will tell you we collectively got something very wrong in marketing terms since the turn of the millennium; that was a short sightedness to the blue ocean of potential customers that have little interest in shaving either Watts or legs. Since the 2012 Olympics the UK went into overdrive in marketing aerodynamics, weight and all the things enthusiasts may tell you will make them faster. Overhead at trade shows were graphics with sleek cyclists and swishes of air flowing by. For the many who didn’t see themselves in such an image it was alienating. Some of us will never be fast and others don’t wish to be.
Things, however, have been changing. Seen on London’s underground, adverts for Specialized electric bikes tried to convince the Covid-19, price hike and strike-tired commuters that there is a better way. Meanwhile, industry volunteer funded campaign #BikeisBest didn’t miss a trick with the fuel crisis, plastering ads promoting cycling near petrol garages where prices were running at a rate higher than the blood pressure of those going nowhere in the traffic.
In terms of cycling for transport, the appetite and opportunity for Guerrilla marketing and outside the box thinking is ripe. With Northern Line commuters facing 17 weeks of disruption national retailer Halfords has used its considerable resource to offer Oyster card or season ticket holders loan electric bikes for up to a week at a time via its Balham, Hendon and Brixton branches.
Halfords Cycling Director Paul Tomlinson said of the effort: “Maintenance on the Northern Line will cause huge disruption to commuters who already had to travel on one of the busiest services in the whole country. But there is another way to get around. Ebikes are fun, fast and simple, and much of Central London is now well-served by safe cycling lanes. So, why not travel above ground and see what you’ve been missing all these years?”
As a national chain, Halfords’ effort racked up some column inches across the cycling press, but this sort of campaign isn’t just the reserve of big business, in fact some of the best opportunist marketing efforts have come from spur of the moment reflexes from individuals.
Hope Tech’s hot air balloon is a fine example of thinking on one’s feet and when approached by a friend in the business co-founder Ian Weatherill didn’t think twice about footing the bill for print costs in order to try out airborne marketing.
Ian’s brother in the business Alan Weatherill told CI.N: “We flew it at the start of the Three Peaks cyclocross and it certainly was eye-catching. There is however a massive issue with balloons which we quickly found out. They cannot fly if there is any wind or rain, which is quite a drawback for the UK. Also, when the conditions are perfect you need to have suitable landing terrain in the direction of flight. We were very lucky with the Three Peaks as there was some very unseasonably mild weather.”
Not the only one to take to the skies, Wiggle has previously flown a banner over the Sydney marathon in a bid to raise awareness of the retailer touching down in Australia. With such a high profile event, advertising was largely banned on the ground, so with a little bit of Guerrilla marketing mindset the brand worked around the problem.
“Creativity in landing the message is a key part of advertising now,” Shift Active Media CEO Wayne Brown told CI.N, in response to being asked his agency’s role in the eye-catching rule bender.
While return on investment may not have been central to these exercises, there are countless regular calendar events for which a little pre-planning can generate income alongside promotion. By the time this magazine lands the seasonal opportunities will be opening up for creative thinkers. If all has gone to plan, by the time you’re reading this Easter will be six weeks away, which is a decent wedge of time to organise a bit of bike-based Geocaching with chocolate rewards for your shop ride. These kinds of community building events stick in the mind and are family friendly giving you an opportunity to get to know a broad range of customers.
Out of the box activations
For those of us who had a bit of spare time through the ‘fourth wave’ of Covid19, turning on a games console and downloading the action sports game Rider’s Republic might have turned up some interesting examples of non-traditional product placement. With a bike segment of the game, covering both race and slopestyle, brands such as YT, Commencal and DMR levered their new season bike launches into the visuals.
Upgrade Bikes’ Digital Marketing Manager Tom Catton was behind the placement of virtual bikes. He told CI.N: “Ubisoft Annecy reached out to us about featuring some bikes in the game. Obviously, we jumped at such a golden opportunity. The collaboration required some work on our part; we had to provide a lot of technical drawings and frame measurements, but it was well worth it. Now the game has launched and we have seen the other big bike brands present in the game, it kind of seems like we are punching above our weight. I think that’s a testament to the hard work the team at DMR has put in over the past 26 years in creating a globally recognised and admired brand.”
The best bit for DMR was that the only cost to get involved was the team’s time. With snowboarding, skiing, mountain biking, road racing and even wing suiting in the multi-discipline game numerous brands had the chance to embed their goods in the game. Spotting the opportunity and being ready to jump at it is key, says Catton.
“Frankly, with mountain biking interest being so low amongst the general population until recently there was always a limit to how far out of the box you could go. This is now starting to change as MTB is becoming more of a mainstream hobby and MTB lifestyle is permeating everyday life. Thinking of a few examples, Deathgrip the movie was available to watch on Amazon and on long haul flights for a while. Athletes like Fabio Wibmer are some of the most watched on Youtube, and we see MTB references in TV advertising are becoming more normal. Then there are those weird Toyota Instagram posts. So out-of-the-box ideas are probably becoming more useful now.”
A specialist in spotting these sorts of opportunities and indeed creating them is the aforementioned industry marketing agency Shift Active Media. Shift’s CEO told CI.N it’s never about “doing a stunt for the stunt’s sake”. This is particularly applicable if a company tries to talk the talk, but does not walk the walk.
“Don’t get lazy and try to copy something been done, it won’t have same impact. Really think about your potential audience and make sure that your message is tonally right. If your business is not genuinely trying to make a difference to women’s cycling, for example, then it’s best not to do a one off stunt. Your message has to be credible. Stunts are high risk and while shock tactics were the early currency of internet, that can backfire spectacularly now,” says Brown.
The agency has guided a number of brands through the gauntlet of making the right impression with commuters and a lasting one, to boot. Though Shift does not take all the credit for a brand’s ideas, its activations include working with YT Bikes to bring American actor and comedian Christopher Walken on board to deliver a rousing, cinematic introduction to the Jeffsy mountain bike. “This brought cultural interest from outside the bike world and blend it, so that turned heads in quite a natural way.”
When it comes to Zwift’s takeover of Harrogate, on display as part of Zwift’s UCI World Championships activation in Yorkshire, 18 months of planning was required to draw the attention of the masses. First of all, the ticket gates and train station turned orange with the virtual cycling world’s branding and on top of that a local pub became the Zwift Draft House.
“With this we reached world cycling fans and the public in a new way. Zwift wanted to make a better experience for traveling fans as soon as they landed. The Draft house beer location was a play on words, like drafting in the game and resonated with people there. All of this created a rich experience. Alongside this we held a GCN pub quiz and Wahoo were able to lay down indoor equipment to run various competitions throughout the night. Overall, this one was just different and unexpected, so it did leave an impression and went viral online and simply by people saying ‘Did you see the Zwift marketing?’.”
Lead Pic @YT Industries