#Vueltaskelta

Award Category
Best Use of a Small Budget (Up to 300,000)

Agency
MediaCom

Client
Foxtel and Eurosport

Sponsor
#Vueltaskelta

Objectives

Cycling is one of the fastest-growing sports in Australia and Eurosport has the most comprehensive coverage of cycling on Australian TV. The problem is that, for the majority of Australia’s 1.3 million armchair cycling fans, competitive cycling starts and ends with the Tour De France, which is broadcast by SBS. MediaCom needed to break this perception and increase the channel’s cumulative reach by 25% year-on-year with a budget of just $50,000.

Campaign

To do this the agency defined Eurosport’s target audience as hardcore cyclists, focussing on the 313,000 Australians for whom cycling is their number one passion. MediaCom tapped into the social aspect of cycling by finding a role for Eurosport within the cycling conversations that mattered. It employed a combination of social, mobile and digital content partnerships to mobilise key influencers and cut through to this uniquely passionate audience. The Vuelta a España event was used to start the conversation by challenging Australia’s cycling community to match the climbs the peloton endures in the real races. For the ‘#Vueltaskelta’ MediaCom partnered with the blog Cycling Tips which allowed it to call out climbers and drive word-of-mouth about the gruelling test. Cycling GPS application Strava was used to build and populate a live leaderboard of metres climbed. Cyclists were encouraged to post updates about their challenge using the hashtag and Eurosportbranded coffee carts were positioned along key cycling routes across Australia.

Results

Nearly 10,000 cyclists entered the challenge and together they climbed a combined 52 million vertical metres. Eurosport handed out more than 1000 branded coffees, while just under a million social impressions were generated around the #Vueltaskelta hashtag. A cumulative audience of 750,000 was delivered, which was up markedly from 530,000 the year before and represented a rise of 42%.

Judges Comments

A great insight, which took the challenge to the audience and to the streets. A really well executed campaign across TV, digital and the real world, with outstanding results.