Over the course of three years, we partnered with Ford to bring the Ford and Team Sky partnership to life across the UK.
The partnership with Team Sky provided an opportunity to embrace the vibrant sport of cycling and to connect with a new audience of passionate cycling fans who are happy to engage with brands actively supporting their lifestyle.
However, we need to ensure that this brand partnership was being activated effectively at a local level, bringing the dealerships into play and helping to build brand affinity.
Our solution was to develop ‘Tour de Ford’, a free to enter cycling event held at Ford dealerships across the UK.
This revolved around inviting a new audience into showrooms and building awareness of the Ford product range, as well as creating PR and social opportunities for dealers and providing opportunities for ongoing communication with prospects.
Each element of the customer experience was fully customised to reflect the Ford and Sky branding, and we incorporated Team Sky and wider PR communications.
We centrally managed the planning, logistics and guest management. All guests were invited through our event management platform, whilst we set up a bespoke event microsite and emails to facilitate event registration, follow up and prospect nurturing.
We set up both 50km and 80km Ride Outs to entice cyclists of different levels, all of which set off from different Ford dealerships across the UK.
We built anticipation and awareness for the ride outs by creating content and amplifying on social media. As a key social channel for the cycling community, we also made sure to establish a presence on Strava.
The events were so successful that they were repeated and expanded each year of the partnership, until Team Sky was bought by INEOS.