Is cycling the new fishing?

Along with a few other sports like tennis, fishing and running in particular, cycling has a peculiar position of being a far bigger recreation than it is a sport.

What I mean by that is that the number of people who are out on their bikes is far, far greater than the number of people who follow the sport of cycling. Sure the Tour de France might generate a couple of million viewers for the final stage when it's live on ITV, but according to some research I've seen there are something like 7.5 Million regular cyclists in the UK. And it's this 7.5 Million cyclists that brands want to talk to, especially as cycling becomes the new golf, these are people with disposable income who are very attractive to brands from all sorts of different sectors.

So here's the dilemna - it's hard for brands to connect with the recreational cyclist as the vehicles don't really exist. Sure, RideLondon will be a great start as there will be something like 100,000 amateur cyclists taking part over the weekend, but how many cyclists are there out there on a Sunday morning who might only enter one or two sportives a year, and really aren't that interested in races like Milan - San Remo or Paris Roubaix. And you can bet your last dollar they'll never have heard of the Lincoln GP or Melton CiCLE Classic.

I ride with a guy most weekends - he's in his late 40's, has been riding for a couple of years and is totally hooked. We've done a few sportives together, and we're undertaking a long 4 day ride together next year. He loves his bike, and loves to ride, but has only ever watched the Tour de France, and certainly wouldn't know any of our top UK pros other than Wiggo, Cav and Froome.

If the sport of cycling wants to attract sponsors into the sport, then cycling needs to think about how they are going to get guys like my mate engaged with the sport, and not just riding his bike. Sponsors want to connect with the 7.5 Million regular cyclists, not just with the 250,000 of us who will set our Sky+ box for 3 am to record the Tour of Taiwan in February.

And that means that event organisers, broadcasters and governing bodies need to think long and hard about how they're promoting the sport so that events like the Tour Series and the Premier Calendar races attract large numbers of spectators, and start delivering big numbers on TV. Here's a few ideas I've had on what needs to be done:

 1 - Imagine that every viewer and spectator is watching the event for the first time - dumb it down and make sure people understand what's going on. Cycling can be a complicated, tactical sport - it needs to be explained.

2 - Appeal to kids and to families - most MaMils and new cyclists are dads, or even mums. Have activites for the kids so it becomes a family day out.

3 - Please, please, please can broadcasters explain how the race has developed rather than going straight to the action. Yes Eurosport I mean you. Give us some context to the race and to the event rather than diving straight into the action.

4 - Create more events like RideLondon where amateurs ride the course ahead of the professionals and then hang around to watch the end of the race. Surely that's just a win win for everyone as the organiser has an extra revenue stream from the sportive, and the professionals get to race in front of bigger crowds.

5 - Teams need to engage more with the fans - Team Sky do this well. Get a loyal fan base - with social media as it is, one loyal fan will attract 5 more and so on, and so on. Things like twitter q&a's and video diaries work really well.

That's just 5 ideas, but there's loads more.

Everyone connected with cycling, who earns a living out of cycling, needs to take some responsibility. The sport of cycling is fantastic - it's interesting, full of history, dynamic and most of all fun - and the more people that watch it live or on the TV the better it is for us, and the more secure our jobs are in the future.

What does success look like?

Having been involved in media, sponsorship and marketing for nearly 20 years now, I've come across all sorts of different methodologies for proving return on investment and measuring success of different campaigns and sponsorship programmes. Some hit the nail on the head, but most are fairly wide of the mark.

The reason is normally that objectives haven't been clearly set at the outset (or set at all), and as a result the measurement is often of the wrong criteria as there are no KPI's.

Now I know there's a load of marketing jargon and claptrap here - the message though is simple - if you don't know what success looks like, how do you know if you've achieved it?

In cycling particularly, I do wonder how sponsors are defining success. I still find it unbelievable that HTC had to pull out of the sport because they couldn't make their sponsorship work. But then what were they hoping to achieve? They certainly got a lot of 'brand' and 'logo' exposure - but did cycling fans actually know what HTC was? This was probably a case of setting the wrong success measures - and as most of us know, sponsorship is no longer all to do with logo exposure. If you want to change consumer behaviour in the modern day, just showing someone a logo a hundred times isn't going to make any difference. 

So back to measurement - this would be my blueprint. Sponsorship objectives must be allied to the overall marketing objectives, so for example in this case success will take the form of shifting consumers perception of the brand, and their likelihood to purchase. Other parts of the marketing programme will ensure that we turn these shifts into sales. But for me, the crucial element is that through the research we undertake we will be able to compare attitude shifts between audiences - so for example between hardcore cycling fans, Mamils and the general population. That way we can see if our specific cycling activity is resonating, and with which audiences.

It certainly isn't rocket science - in fact, it's incredibly simple. Know what it is you want your sponsorship to achieve, ensure that it's going to make a difference to the bottom line and then make sure you're measuring it (so put some budget into research).

Introduction

Here at Marla Media we spend most of our time working on sponsorships in the world of cycling. That is not everything that we do (we are a media and sponsorship consultancy), but we make no apologies now if most of what we blog about is connected to sponsorship and to cycling. Let's face it - it's a rich vein of debate at the moment, and our feeling is that the ripple effect of 'Lancegate' will linger for years to come.

This is our first effort at writing a blog, and hopefully over the coming months we'll get a bit better at it. We believe in honesty, integrity and fairness - those principles should come across in what we write - and if we upset people then we apologise now. But what we will say will be our opinion, and we are entitled to it. If you disagree, or have an alternative point of view, then let us know.

Our first blog of substance should be coming out this week, and we're going to look into the subject of sponsorship measurement in cycling. Hope you enjoy it.