Mojave took a look at some of the major bike brands of the Tour de France to see how they played out in Social Media. We audited the current Social Media presence of Trek, Cervelo, Specialized and Cannondale and then looked at how each where mentioned in relation to the Tour de France.
First, we tracked each brand over the course of the Tour so far. As expected, Trek performance was solid over the course of the Tour, but Cervelo got great hits from Thor Hushovd and Hussler wins. We expect Trek to trend much higher next week as the Tour heads into the mountains. Click on any chart to see a larger version.
Next, we aggregated total mentions of each brand in relation to Tour de France. We expected Trek to be the clear winner here, but were surprised at the overall strength of Cervelo in Social Media.
Finally, we ranked each brand with our Social Media Index, in which we look at the following attributes:
Presence: Official Social Media existence and usage
Consistency: Branding, messaging, design, & persona uniformity
Integration: Social Media marketing & strategic implementation
Engagement: Content quality and audience captivation
Buzz: Organic, user-generated interest & activity in Social Media
As our audit shows, both Trek and Specialized use Social Media well. Specialized edges over Trek in some key areas, like integration and user engagement. Cervelo has great organic buzz, despite having a smaller corporate Social Media strategy.
When I think about TV media: I remember Specialized and Trek ads.
I can’t help but note which company talks the most about themselves…and gets the least buzz in return. Indicates to me that Social Media viewers are tired of the same old *We We We* mentality, same as why they mistrust corporate blogs.
The company I refer to has just hired a full-time Social Media guy; perhaps he can convince them to become a part of the online conversation instead of continually trying to hijack it and turn it back on themselves, like that really annoying guy at the party.
I was definitely checkin’ out Cervelo when Haussler won stg. 13. Not surprised at these stats.
Check out projectletour.com.
Interesting analysis… would have loved to see Felt in the mix as I was drooling over Wiggins’ TT bike. I also wonder if language plays a role at all (e.g., Orbea is popular in Spain and Euskatel rides them, but Twitter and many social media platforms are predominantly in English so the Orbea audience may not be there).
I wrote a similar post a few weeks ago comparing Trek and Cannondale’s use of social media: http://www.amymengel.com/2009/07/01/social-media-smackdown-cannondale-vs-trek/
Intriguing presentation. Especially appreciate Rick’s concept of “hijacking the conversation.”
This is more about the merits of Cervelo’s sponsorship strategy than it is about social media marketing. Because Cervelo is the title sponsor of their team*, they get mentioned whenever anyone blogs, Tweets, Facebooks, etc. about any of their riders. That’s not the case when someone talks about the Trek-sponsored Astana team or Specialized-sponsored Saxo Bank.
I’d be willing to bet that Astana (with Lance and race-winner Alberto Contador) was *by far* the most blogged about team and that Saxo Bank was blogged about more than Cervelo.
Without taking this into account, it’s not a true comparison of social media marketing among the three bike brands.
*: Cervelo is actively looking for a non-cycling brand to come on board as title sponsor.
Thanks for the comments – to be clear, we only looked at these brands in relation to posts/conversations about the Tour de France. I’m sure in the overall blogosphere, Trek is one of the top mentioned bike brands. We were more interested in looking at how the brands fared with organic conversations about the TDF, especially with all the money spent for the event.
It makes sense that Cervelo is mentioned more as a team, but they also do seem to get more organic buzz from their die-hard fans. It’s interesting to us that the link between Astana and Trek may not be as strong as some people think. Although we can’t go back at look at the data, I think the Postal/Trek connection was much stronger in people’s minds. We also believe that the Schleck brothers’ relationship to Specialized is not well understood to the casual fan, which is a shame given what amazing riders those two are.
We aren’t making any sweeping proclamations with this data of the failure of one brand over the other, nor judge the sponsorship strategy of each. But it is interesting to see the relationship between paid media spending vs social media conversations around each brand. They aren’t necessarily linked, and we think there is a great opportunity for these brands to embrace social media in a strategic way.
Agree with Josh – Trek should spend some extra money so that Lance is riding for ‘RadioShack – Trek’ next year.
Cervelo is also running a genius film series that gives people a reason to stay on the web. I feel like what they are doing really drives conversation. They are producing the richest content for sure. CHK it – http://www.bartape.net “Beyond the Peleton” This is the content they are cutting broadcast spots from. No doubt having riders win stages makes the spike but this is the class of the group for driving convo and brand equity.
Trek has a good performance