THE VIRTUAL TOUR DE FRANCE
CASE STUDY NO.2
Our partners rely heavily on the visibility their brands receive during the season’s international racing schedule. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, from Utah to Spain to South America, many of the scheduled races were cancelled. We had to pivot and find ways to salvage the season and maximize the team’s exposure. So how do you race when you can’t go anywhere? Like everything else in 2020, we did it virtually.
Highlights
When Zwift announced they were planning the first ever virtual Tour de France, we moved quickly to secure two of the limited available wildcard spots for our men’s and women’s teams.
In the virtual event, cyclists compete against each other, riding stationary bikes on trainers linked to technology that measures their output. During the race, avatars of each rider appear in a computer-generated environment which resembles the terrain they would encounter in the real Tour de France.
Since the team was new to virtual cycling, we hired top-ranked Zwift racer Holden Comeau to join our coaching staff. Comeau gave our teams a crash course in the nuances of e-racing and taught them strategies and techniques to gain specific advantages in the virtual realm.
To maximize our exposure while on this global stage, our in-house marketing and PR teams created a holistic multi-channel campaign to drive excitement and brand awareness leading up to and during the race. The content we created included:
A design theme that paid homage to 16-bit retro-video games
Digital and social media content
A website experience
Video content that co-opted live-stream of the race
A six-week editorial content calendar
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The results
The team made a bold statement to the world when rider Matteo Dal-Cin captured the men’s Stage 3 victory, out-performing some of the World Tour’s top sprinters. The stage win generated significant interest and press for the team at an international level. Matteo’s post-stage interview was broadcast live in over 90 countries, on networks across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas.