For many it would have seemed inconsequential that in 1973, while DJ Kool Herc was inventing hip hop in New York, a child named Alexander Nikolayevich Vinokourov was born in Petropavl, the Soviet Union. That may have been true at the time, but as chaos theory proposes, the flap of a butterfly’s wings can create a hurricane. That hurricane arrived at the start of the year with the “First Ever Pro Cycling Rap”.
A lot has been written and joked about the video but the fact it has got people talking is important. Just compare the number of views to most other bits of content teams are putting out. It starts a wider discussion on how they use social media to promote themselves and their sponsors.
Cycling can be a nerdy, dense and boring sport. Races go on for hours, tours stretch over several weeks and then there’s also a thing called a team time trial. Despite this, viewing figures of bike racing have grown steadily alongside a global rise in cycling. In the UK in particular the rise of Team Sky and the 2012 Olympics helped to feed into this resurgence of cycling popularity. Traffic counts suggest that the number of UK miles cycled in 2017–3.27 billion — is around 29% above the figure for 1997.
Cycling as a pursuit continues to grow globally but the viewing figures have started to level out. While some of this is caught up in how and where races are displayed — cycling is not a mainstream sport so tracking down where to watch can be difficult — this does not mean teams are taking full advantage of the tools at their disposal. If teams want to build brands they need to work harder and smarter.
Modern cycling was born with business in mind. It was designed as a platform to shift papers. As a result it has always been a sport of grand narratives. It’s history is built of rubber, strained muscles, sweat and continental dirt. This lives on in the sport’s DNA but today’s media landscape is very different from the one that was chasing the riders of the Tour De France in 1903. If pro teams are going to continue to be relevant platforms for brands they need to do a better job of how they promote themselves. You can test this by asking cycling fans what their favourite team’s sponsor does. Beyond a handful of brands this isn’t that well known.
Despite changes the sport remains a business of promotion. The precarity of this model is highlighted every year with teams like Aqua Blue Sport folding or even bigger names like Quick-Step struggling to find support. Cycling isn’t the only sport that has faced these difficulties: around the world teams and governing bodies are updating the way they represent themselves in order to strengthen their audiences.
Teams in the pro peloton can only do so much about the TV rights and the deals that the owners of races cut but that doesn’t mean they are powerless. With social media and growing PR teams organisations at all levels have better tools to shape who and what they are than ever before. Despite this, the depth and breadth of social media output is limited. Teams fit into three loose archetypes: the PR Rep, the Cycle Geek & the Joker.
- The PR Reps — They post shot after shot of riders on bikes or team branding with little or simply boring comments. It’s paint by numbers stuff: Bahrain Merida, CCC Team, Groupama-FDJ, Lotto Soudal, Mitchelon Scott Team Jumbo-Visma, Team Sky, Bora-Hansgrohe*, UAE Team Emirates
- The Cycle Geeks — This archetype has the broadest range. They can look like PR Reps (using a lot of branding) but tend to give a greater level of detail. They sometimes give more human stories and can also have nice features, but these will relate to cycle specific content such as tips or tech. It’s better but will struggle to draw in those new to the sport: AG2R La Mondiale, Team Dimension Data, Deceuninck — Quick-Step Cycling Team, Movistar, Team Katusha-Alpecin, Team Sunweb, Trek-Segafredo
- The Jokers — These teams actually show some personality. It can be silly, it can be cooler but overall it feels like a human was involved in some level of the process. It’s the best in class for breaking beyond the inner circles of cycling: Astana, EF Education First-Drapac
While being a PR Rep doesn’t have to be a bad thing — Bora-Hansgrohe’s content is often great, but this is purely down to the tonal direction from Sagan’s personality — it feels the least accessible when looking at a broader social media landscape. Teams exist in the same messy world as mukbang superstars and the ice bucket challenge. Their inspiration shouldn’t come from the pro peloton, or even necessarily from other sports.
Combining modern communication tools with cycling’s storytelling DNA teams can build better brands around three key areas: guidance, individuals and narratives.
1. Strike the right tone as guides
Helping fans — old and new — navigate this landscape is key to keep people engaged. Tone is one of the most important things here, which is a big factor behind the rise of GCN. Presenters who don’t seem to take the sport too seriously but clearly know their stuff. They now have English, Spanish, Italian channels, and I’ve seen them advertising for jobs here in Japan.
Rapha’s decision to bring their Radio Rapha race show to their team coverage is a smart one. There’s no talk of metrics of power meters and beer seems to feature pretty regularly. Lotto Soudal’s attempt at this feels a little to flat and can been in the genuine discomfort seen in the riders’ faces. Creating a voice that people want to listen to is key to breaking down the sport into something more manageable and interesting.
2. Have the confidence to support (not suffocate) individuals
Sagan isn’t one of the most popular riders in the pro peloton because he wins or can do wheelies (though it doesn’t hurt). He’s great because he says weird things and seems like he’d just as quickly move onto something else if cycling disappeared tomorrow. The obsessive nature of the sport means that you get a lot of dedicated people that can come across as a little one dimensional. This might be the case for some, but cycling attracts weirdos too. When I found out that Svein Tuft likes to hang out in the mountains, hiking barefoot he got my support in any race he featured in.
Translating this from real life onto social media platforms can be difficult. Teams are clearly concerned about managing what riders say. Of course they are worried about protecting their brand but media training shouldn’t just be about what to say in an interview. It should be a set of tools for riders to present themselves as individuals, as characters that fans want to learn more about. As Taylor Phinney says in the second Thereabouts film:
“Everything about my professional life is sponsored and those are the people that pay you and that’s why you race your bike, so you can get paid. But it takes away that freedom to express yourself, genuinely as a human by being able to choose how you present yourself because we have restrictions on Twitter, Instagram…It’s such a delicate thing to talk about.”
Teams are putting the stops on their greatest assets — the human stories behind the power meter numbers or the race results. Give them training, but also give them support on how to better tell their stories and build their personal brand. They will fuck up but that’s the nature of social media. The perpetually refreshing landscape means that you don’t need to worry for long.
3. Build human-centered narratives
This comes back to the core of what cycle racing has been since it began. Both the above points feed into this idea of rich cycling stories. It’s nice to win but this isn’t always important. Above all this sport fetishizes the struggle and a touch of panache.
Today’s social media landscape is obsessed with stories and evolving narratives — this is where the growth across platforms is (see below). Side note of WhatsApp Status too: how are/could be teams using this? The Cycling Podcast is one example — using the platform well to capture fan voices — but there are many more ways teams could build connections with fans.
The popularity of Conor Dunne & Larry Warbasse’s ‘NoGo’ tour on Twitter is just one recent example of the audience’s interest in simple, honest narratives. It doesn’t even need to be well crafted. The distances might be longer than your average club ride but the story makes it much more relatable than many tour stages.
Getting your brand on the TV is one thing, building a connection or some depth to it is another. Thinking about the guidance, individuals and narratives allows you to better shape the context of how/why your audience remembers it and where a team’s brand or sponsor fits into the story. People groaned when Sagan avoided the traditional Roubaix showers in favour of his sponsor’s but at least this helps bring the brand to life. With proper thought about building in the personality of the rider it doesn’t have to be dull either. Things are getting better for teams: EF Education First’s new video — which doesn’t have a team kit in sight — looks incredible, Astana hired their answer to Sagan and use him well as light relief, and Team Dimension Data have just started a podcast, which isn’t awful.
Cycling hasn’t really changed, only the way the stories are told have — it’s rarely about who wins, and more about the human struggle and suffering. If teams can use social media to connect with fans and show a sport beyond robotic feats or numbers they will create better platforms for brands. So, yeah maybe we’ll see a few more raps coming out of the peloton but it’s better than the same team press shot being rolled out every week on Instagram.
Thanks for reading. Please get in touch if you want to chat more…and if you’re feeling confident about this I’ve just noticed that Team Sunweb are hiring a social media intern. Ganbatte!
