Key Art Design
Concept
Art Direction
Campaign Design
Quality Assurance
Role
Creative Director: Taylor Buck & Inese Selina
Producer: Ian Gonder & Chris Latimer
Graphic Design: Lauren Hamilton
Photographer 1: Topher Delancy
Video: Ian McMillan
Video/Drone: Paul Brunstien
Video Director: Sunn Kim
Copywriter: Max Polin
Visual Merchandising: Eric Pool
Crew
The Set Up
My co-workers were sick of hearing me talk about bike packing and how we needed to add it to our collection of stories. At long last we discovered we had an abundance of bags and travel related accessories to talk about it. Rather than my dirt-bag vision of what bikepacking is, we decided to do it a little more upscale. During my time in the bike shop, I talked to a lot of our customers that did “credit card tours” —hotel hopping by bike. This seemed to fit our current customer base, but in my mind didn’t get the attention of a new customer. We made up for this by adding video of our adventures that could relate to a younger audience, that may be more bikepacking-curious.
The end result gained a lot of engagement, some sales of a category we didn’t see traction in and got us some fresh content to distribute through the next year in other brand moments. However, our ROI was proven during a coupon promotion that ran at the same time as this campaign. We ended up selling a record number of travel cases and bike bags during this time. Later, we ran the story again the following travel season along with another coupon moment with similar success.
We saved some budget by recruiting our Competitive Cyclist crew as talent. Budgeting wasn’t exactly the motive for this, however, it was to show our expertise in all categories of what we sell. Our two brand social media managers and our copywriter jumped in front of the camera. Behind the lens was Topher Delancy again between shooting our Winter Apparel Guide & Black Friday Sale and our Road Bike Guide in Moab. His stylistic & editorial approach was what we needed in addition to his ability to shoot film, capturing the essence of bikepacking culture.
Sydney & Jono and our production crew traveled from Utah to San Jose where we met up with our writer. Day 1: unpacking shots, bike set-up and B-rolls at the San Jose hotel. The following morning we would meet our other rider and shoot bike racks, another category in the mix of bike travel.
Day 2: We stopped by a bike shop in Sonoma for some minor repairs after travel and got the team ready to ride into the evening. We were able to shoot bags being strapped to bikes, apparel choices and other accessories. Into the evening we rode a good number of miles capturing loads of content along the way.
Day 3: was loads of climbing and endless content capture. We ended up at a gorgeous Air B&B in wine country. The next morning we set out to finish off the ride back in our loop. The riders peeled off from the production truck to grab some well deserved donuts.
Additionally, we had 2 members of our video team along under the direction of the genius Sunn Kim. The objective was to film the story and what Jono & Sydney used and their reviews of the products. As a bonus, we were able to capture the review of the ENVE MOG as a capable bikepacking bike of choice for adventures like this and bigger endeavors.
To see the full site experience live open this link.
Overall hero for the story designed by Lauren Hamilton
Launch Email
This was the perfect time to push for a more editorial email. We needed to give more context to what we were doing as this was totally new for Competitive Cyclist. The backstory plus the addition of giving face to our Gearheads Jono & Sydney, who already had a presence on our social channel.
This was certainly a spot where we could tell a story to engage the audience and educational about the gear, leading to a transactional customer experience as well. I had already been experimenting with new email templates and collaborating with our designers on how we could really push the emails to go beyond the hero, copy and product.
Prototype of the mock here
Getting the Shot
Often times shooting video and stills side by side isn’t ideal. Often times they’re competing each other. This team knew how to do it right. Strong communicaiton of objectives by all members of the crew is what matters. I was fortunate to have a team the functioned together so well. Ian, Paul and Topher couldn’t have been better partners and mentors in the field.