Podcast special: Why now is the time to back BikeIsBest
We have a special edition of the Cycling Industry News podcast for you this week, once again drawing on Adam Tranter’s broad overview of the bike market’s greatest opportunities, as understood by the trade-supported BikeIsBest research.
With emphasis on why now is the time for the trade to up the ante in its collective support of the BikeIsBest campaign and its consumer research, Adam takes just over an hour to detail how his team’s work has been pivotal in turning the heads of on the fence consumers considering changing their transport habits.
Speaking first on his role as West Midlands Cycling and Walking Commissioner Adam says that “It is quite easy for local authorities to set up” such a role, but that he would “advise against” doing so just for the sake of it, should genuine support not yet exist for ambitious ideas.
“The great thing about Active Travel England is that they’re helping nurture local authorities to build political support and building a way of working with combined authorities, as well as a way of working with commissioners. Having one gives you a greater voice potentially, with Government, which can be beneficial because of the way funding decisions are made.”
On what resonates with people looking at cycling with some curiosity in the face of price hikes to other transport forms, as well as other pros for two wheels, Adam says of the research “We’ve learned over the past few years that different narratives have different effects on different people. Cycling means a lot of different things to a lot of people. It’s not as simple as air quality, climate, health, local community, or being about saving money – that’s sort of the funny thing about cycling, it does all of those things. As others have said, if this was a pill to sell it would make somebody a lot of money.
“The research we have done has tried to identify the barriers and we often know the barriers are around safety and the perception of. We don’t need to do any more work here, every survey and poll we know says it’s a key barrier. If you look at how you lift that barrier and get people to cycle you really need to change policies and get more infrastructure, but you can’t do that if everyone thinks its an elite pursuit for middle class people, so we have to change the image.”
That is something that Adam’s marketing agency Fusion Media has been working with brands to achieve, most notoriously putting Specialized on petrol pumps as the cost of fuel rose sharply.
To pledge your support to the work of BikeIsBest head here, or email here.
For the podcast in full, tune in below:
