The relative merits of cannibalism
Posted on 14. Jun, 2010 in Bike industry, Marketing, Sponsors
My initial reaction: “Holy shit.”
Now I see this ad differently but I’m still not convinced.
Despite the formidable legend of its namesake, Eddy Merckx Cycles NV is a small company. When Sobradis NV acquired a majority stake from Eddy in October 2008, the company had annual revenues of 6 million Euro (about 8 million USD at the time) and 20 employees. The brand has grown since then – now with 25 employees and soon moving to a larger facility – but it’s hardly setting the bike industry on fire.
But they’re competing with companies 50-100 times their size, so what’s Merckx supposed to do? They could run ads with studio shots of a bike or a picture of a sponsored athlete winning a race. But if you flip through a few back issues of VeloNews and ROAD like I just did, you’ll see that just about every ad for a bike brand follows one of these formats. There’s no way that Merckx could take the typical approach and hope to stand out meaningfully from the crowd.
If you’re small, you do what you have to do to get attention.
In this new campaign, Merckx has opted for shock value and done a good job of executing the main visual element. It freaked me out at first, but now I’m warming up to its sincerity. Merckx clearly understands that they have no choice but to shake things up. Plus, my friend Michael Tabtabai is a fan. But what is the ad actually saying? The combination of “I Am Tiger Woods” and “proud sponsor of blah blah blah” communicates nothing about why anyone should buy the bike.
WE’RE ALL CANNIBALS falls into the trap of telling consumers that pro cyclists are just like us. I’ve written before about what I call “postmodern road cycling”, which is basically the recognition that the average cyclist experiences the sport in a way completely different from, say, Tom Boonen. In fact, I think most of us experience pretty much everything differently from Tom Boonen.
Now imagine if the tagline said WE’RE STILL CANNIBALS. Changing that single word adds a promise to keep tradition alive and a respect for the consumer (“we know that you know that Eddy sold the company”) without implying the falsehood that my riding experience is anything like Tom Boonen’s . WE’RE STILL CANNIBALS would relaunch the brand with a stronger sense of history and an aggressive outlook to the future.
I don’t know about you, but that’s what I want to see from the company founded by the greatest bike racer of all time.
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Nicely done, I like your tweak on the line. Hoping we see some more examples of this campaign.
I’m with you – think “We’re Still Cannibals” is a better line.
I also thought the ad was kind of goofy at first, but when you look at it again – it is different and does attract attention.
The bottom line in advertising is whether it creates sales for the company. I can’t see anyone running out to buy one of these bikes after looking at the photo used. I didn’t. I bought a Giant.