From Birch and Flannel: Selling bike / giving away and encourage

from BIRCHANDFLANNEL

It’s called 7 Bikes for 7 Wonders and it is the latest campaign for Travel Oregon. To celebrate the seven wonders of Oregon, Travel Oregon connected with seven bike builders to create a one-of-a-kind bike inspired by the corresponding wonder. Each of the seven weeks of the campaign, a new bike is unveiled, then hidden the following Saturday for anyone to find and keep. A video introducing the bike is posted Monday and a clue as to the bike’s hidden whereabouts is posted Thursday. Bikes are hidden at 5am on Saturdays. The campaign is in its fifth week and all four bikes so far have been found–most within 30 minutes of being hidden.

This is a video for week four. The bike was found six minutes after being hidden.

Of course I didn’t learn about this until weeks into the campaign. Probably because my Minnesota location doesn’t keeps me from seeing promoted online content. Still, I followed along last week and it was fun. I feel like I’m living vicariously through Oregon cyclists who are searching for these bikes. If I were in Oregon, you better believe I would be camping out to search for a bike the minute it is hidden.

This is a campaign that I’m fawning over as a marketer and as a consumer. It is easy to give things away as incentives for online/offline engagement. It is not easy to generate the right kind of engagement that connects your brand with the proper consumer in an impactful way. 7 Bikes for 7 Wonders does that. I’ve been reading articles posted about people who found the first four bikes. These aren’t your typical sweepstakes professionals. Instead, they are the people you’d see if you were on a long ride over rolling hills in the country, or camp next to at a state park. It’s stellar to see deserving people find these bikes, builders getting additional deserved exposure and Oregon be the travel-bug target of cyclists and other outdoor enthusiasts.

The videos featuring bike builders connect with me. I enjoy hearing from other people who love the bicycle as much as I do. The way these bikes are built specifically for an area is the best part–a 29er for the singletracks of Mt. Hood, a road bike for the winding roads of the Columbia River Gorge. I’ve always felt bikes are the ultimate adventure machines because they allow you to experience geography like nothing else. These seven bikes will allow seven cyclists to have tailor-made rides when they experience these seven places.

If you’re reading this from Oregon, visit the Travel Oregon website and connect with them via social media so you can get in on the fun. Remember to enjoy yourself because people like me are living vicariously through you.