Road Bike Buyers Guide

Key Art Design
Concept
Art Direction
Campaign Design
Quality Assurance

Role

Creative Direction: Taylor Buck & Inese Selina
Production: Maeve Reiss & Chris Latimer
Photographer: Topher Delancy
Copywriter: Max Polin
Video Direction: Sunn Kim
Videography: Marcus Catlett
Visual Merchandising: Eric Pool

Crew

The Set Up

From the time that I started at Backcountry, we only were able to support the Road Bike Guide through studio photography. Additionally, if we did an apparel guide, it was likely pulling shots from our archives or doing a full studio run. This was due somewhat to COVID restrictions or just lack of budget. Finally, 2023 We were able to round up our crew and head to Moab. The only problem, Moab in March is less than ideal. It’s cold, the more secluded roads are still full of snow, and we wouldn’t be able to get people riding comfortably in light weight riding apparel.

Well, this team was pro. They endured some cold conditions and kept themselves warm on the bike. We managed to get good weather in the later parts of the day. That’s the time the light is less than ideal for shooting glamor shots of bikes. With the right planning we could get bike beauties in the morning and early evening and the apparel shots in the day. Still, our talent didn’t have the best gear for riding those cold temps in the morning when we wanted to shoot the Road Bike Guide side of things.

Our most popular moment for Competitive Cyclist is the Road Bike Buyers Guide. We break down the best bikes of the year in the 4 categories of endurance, sprint, climb and all-around. Our riders were a combination of employees (Gearheads) and real riders; Alvin & Rachel. Rachel is a true multi disciplinary rider on dirt and pavement. Alvin can kill it on anything drop bar related. Jake, Sydney & Jono, our Gearheads live to ride and could provide great content & feedback for our reviews of these bikes. We really wanted a lived experience through these shots. The shots couldn’t feel too safe or sterile for our apparel moments or riding shots.

Topher Delancy was a photographer that we had worked with from a lifestyle Winter Apparel shoot the previous year. We also got experimental with some night photography to use for our Black Friday/Cyber Sale moments. The work was so lively that we wanted to bring him back in for this one.

We weren’t afraid to step out of the shot list. We hit the list and got some ‘nice-to-haves. We shot from my mini van for both video and photo allowing us to get a bigger range of shots. Sequences from these made some great GIF material for our email team. Anytime we had motion to our emails we saw a dramatic lift in CTR.

This was one of those unplanned moments when reviewing photos.

Additionally, we had the videography talent of Marcus Catlett, who captured the footage of the bike stills, used some incredible gadgets to get POV shots from riders, ultimately elevating our video coverage for this one.

Overall hero for the CC ‘23 Road Bike Buyers Guide

Email Hero for Cervelo S5

Video sample from the series

Further Insight

The Competitive Cyclist Road Bike Buyers Guide was likely one of our biggest full-price moments of the year. This is when we received the most engagement without the mention of a discount. The core demographic for CC was primarily affluent, white, suburban men around the age of 45-60. Years prior we mostly shot in studio for these. While in 2021 we were asked to try something new and engage with a younger audience, we still shot in-house. This difference that year, we used illustrator Bicycle Crumbs to pick up the slack for the supply chain headwinds we were seeing that year. Additionally, our primary audience was aging out, or already had enough high-end gear. The year following, ‘22 RBBG, we shot in studio with a new photographer that focused on sports cars. We wanted to bring that treatment back to the guide, however, we still lacked product to talk about.

2023 we took it to Moab, UT. Moab is mostly known for it’s mountain biking and bike packing terrain. Not road cycling. This was the best place to be this time of year, outside of traveling to California, which was receiving terrible weather at that time. We did just finish a shoot in Napa a month prior for a different story. We were going to face some challenges in the short time we had in Moab. There was still unbearably cold weather, potential for snow (and it did snow), Jeep Safari was happening at the same time and just roads that aren’t super cycling friendly. Still, production challenges aside, we had a great team of talent, a photographer that could nail the shots we didn’t even know we wanted, and created not only a stellar Road Bike Guide, but also an Apparel Guide that was also an objective.

Make It Editorial

Something our copywriter Max Polin & I discussed often was how to make our campaigns more editorial and less sales-pitchy. We stand by our expertise, so why not write proper reviews and make the campaign more engaging for the customer. When we write and design something worth reading & looking at, they will slow down and take the time to consume the information. So we asked our team for their take on the bikes, gathered some pull-quotes and designed them into our email modules and images on site. While I’ve never been one for baking in text for WCAG compliance reasons, I have thought that it can make the images more interesting and informative.

2020–2022

The years prior to this guide were my first years with CC. When I started the 2020 Guide was already started. Clean, quiet, pretty bikes on black backgrounds, thin-sexy-type calling out the category. It worked. The site experience was a little clunky, but it’s what we had to work with. Arrive at a landing page and choose your own adventure.

In 2021, we hit the supply chain wall. Our marketing leadership also wanted to start seeing color. We had 2 challenges. Challenge one: we never really thought too far outside the clean lines or less distracting color. Problem 2: supply was limited and we didn’t have anything new to talk about. This was pivotal for Competitive Cyclist. We decided that we would integrate illustration from Bicycle Crumbs. He creates surreal, near hyper realistic illustrations of bikes and the accessories that surround them. This was a collaborative thought from the brand team, senior AD at the time John Perry and myself on how we actually integrate the illustrations with the products. Ultimately, this led to a standing relationship that would influence future projects. In all honest opinion, I didn’t feel this was right for the Road Bike Guide, but for promotional moments or our upcoming 2022 Gravel Bike Guide.

2022 Road Bike Guide we got back to our roots. Our senior studio photographer & bike photo guru Ben Khuns left us for another studio right when we were planning this shoot. We were fortunate to connect with talent from the sports car photography space. This is the treatment road bikes deserve. (I’ll tag his name when I receive the details).

Original planned approach to the illustrations from 2021 RBBG

We planned these to not be overwhelming, but after reviewing the work we had to pivot. Crumbs provided us with some radial patterns that I later went in and added. I won’t get into the details, but we didn’t have time to cut out each product from the flat lay. We needed more illustrations to make sense as well. John Perry & I tag teamed some bike illustrations and added in patters. Our budget to pay for more illustration work was tapped, so we had to be scrappy to elevate this one.