Challenge:

When the FIM EBK World Cup secured Ed Clancy OBE as its series ambassador, Whistle was tasked with leveraging the triple Olympic gold medallist’s profile in an integrated social and press campaign to build commercial interest and community engagement in the series. 

Solution:

Whistle developed a comprehensive communications strategy for social media, and identified earned editorial coverage opportunities across broadcast, online and print media, using Ed’s bike racing heritage to credentialise EBK’s new form of E-bike city centre racing.

The campaign included extensive media pre-sell and a 72-hour teaser period on social channels.

The media content included a globally-syndicated video news release and a series of one-to-one interviews conducted while riding the closed cycle track on the perimeter of the London Olympic Velodrome, the scene of Ed’s gold medal-winning exploits in 2012.

On the series’ social channels, a variety of content plays were exclusively directed on shared media, including a live Instagram Q&A takeover, short-form explainer reels and post-event content capture to create a library of engaging content that could sustain an ongoing content plan.

Whistle grew EBK’s channels by 49% across Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn in a single week, with a reach of more than 100,000 and an average platform engagement rate of 13%.

In earned media, broadcast news clips were played out to an aggregated audience of 141m homes and exclusive print articles delivered 980,000 estimated views.