Kadisco: Cycling, Marketing, Sponsorship, Social Media

Tour de France team & sponsor video battle!

Posted on 22. Jul, 2009 by Josh in Bike Racing, Bike industry, New Media, Sponsors | 3 Comments

Especially during the Tour, teams and sponsors are generating some interesting documentary-style video coverage of pro cycling. But who’s got the best content? Let’s figure it out! I’ve posted sample videos below from five well known teams and brands. Watch them – or better yet, use the links to check out the full series – and complete the poll to give each a rating. Then vote for your favorite. Voting will be open until the end of the Tour and I’ll post the results next week.

An evening at the Bicycle Film Festival

Posted on 19. Jul, 2009 by Josh in Bike industry, New Media, Personal | No Comments

As of last night, I have broken my unintentional streak of missing the Bicycle Film Festival. Brendt Barbur and Friends try to select film that cover the breadth of the bicycle universe and, over the course of a Saturday evening, I watched more than a dozen ranging from 1 to 75 minutes. Here are my impressions.

Quick update from Indy

Posted on 27. May, 2009 by Josh in Bike industry, Client News | No Comments

Today Zipp’s engineers gave us an all-access tour of the in-house manufacturing facility where every Zipp rim is made by hand. Having worked with Zipp for over a year, what really impressed me was that they put the same level of engineering and technology into their processes as they do into the products themselves. Many of their machines and tools are custom-built. Unfortunately, I can’t really show any pictures of those.

Gone from performance cycling, adidas goes fixed-gear

Posted on 19. May, 2009 by Josh in Bike industry, Trends | 1 Comment

The sneaker world has been abuzz this week with news of a limited-edition adidas fixed gear shoe, which is an interesting development given adidas’ departure from the cycling business at the end of last year. Granted, adidas Performance and adidas Originals are very different brands and separate parts of the company. But symbolically, it’s an intriguing statement for the bike industry

Who rakes cycling’s muck?

Posted on 03. May, 2009 by Josh in Bike industry, Marketing | No Comments

Herman and Chomsky’s ‘propaganda model’ of media posits that “the news” is simply a means by which to put advertising in front of people with buying power. The product is the audience, not the content, and the customers are the advertisers, not the readers. So stories that make people not want to buy stuff or that speak ill of advertisers may be subject to “filtering.” The problem of filtering affects all media but is compounded in cycling, where there’s basically nothing to write about except the products and sponsored athletes of current and potential advertisers.

Zipp drops the new 303

Posted on 18. Apr, 2009 by Josh in Bike industry, Client News | No Comments

I work a lot with the good folks at Zipp but I don’t always get a chance to see the products up close, let alone ride them. Yesterday was an exception.

Zipp introduced a new version of the 303 wheelset to the assembled media at Sea Otter, with technical background from engineer Michael Hall and racing stories from marketing manager Andy Paskins. As you can see, the new 303 has a wider new shape that yields all sorts of benefits – strength, stiffness, comfort, and aerodynamics. After writing lots of copy and interviewing Thor Hushovd about the new releases, it was great to take them out for a spin with Andy, Michael, SRAM’s Michael Zellmann, and Road Bike Action’s Zap Espinoza.

Another year, another Otter

Posted on 16. Apr, 2009 by Josh in Bike Racing, Bike industry | 3 Comments

The “Celebration of Sport” soldiers on, even claiming increases for both exhibitor and athlete attendance from 2008. Despite the pros’ gripes about low prize money and everybody’s gripes about high entry fees, Sea Otter has a great business model – at least by cycling standards – with three stable revenue streams: athlete entry fees, exhibitor fees, and sponsorship. What continues to drive the first two is that Sea Otter remains a good, old-fashioned mountain bike festival with a fantastic cross-country course. And of the sponsor 12 logos on my media credential, SRAM, Thule, Sierra Nevada, Fox Shox, Clif Bar, and Specialized have been sponsors here for as long as I can remember.

More on bikes and social media

Posted on 07. Apr, 2009 by Josh in Bike industry, New Media, Trends | 7 Comments

The bicycle isn’t something about which we have a common cultural understanding in the same way that many of us instinctively understand cars or baseball or that you’re not supposed to eat ice cream for breakfast. Beyond simply learning how to ride as a kid, cyclists rely on sharing individual experiences with each other. That’s why social media has been so significant in both professional cycling and the more utilitarian uses of bicycles.

Towards an urban cycling identity

Posted on 07. Mar, 2009 by Josh in Bike industry, Client News, Trends | 1 Comment

… fashion’s attraction to bicycles is another signal that urban cycling has arrived as a distinct lifestyle. People in the communities that give birth to broader trends in fashion and culture have begun to see the bicycle as part of their self-identity. Essentially, it’s the idea that tastemakers (a word that I dislike) are now saying, “I am a bicyclist.”