PowerBar: The Taste of Sport

Since 1986 PowerBar has developed a range of sports nutrition products. Developed for athletes, by athletes, and by using only the best-tasting, highest quality ingredients, they supply everybody who loves sport with just the right fuel at just the right time.

PowerBar identified Strava as an important touchpoint to engage with endurance athletes. They sponsored a two-week cycling challenge with two aims: strengthening brand loyalty by engaging with endurance athletes, and raising awareness of their new packaging design and slogan “The Taste of Sport”.

PowerBar have been operating for over 30 years, and in 2019 sought a different medium via which to reach more engaged athletes within their target market. In August, PowerBar opted for a two-week cycling challenge that celebrated the Ötztal cycling marathon - a gruelling amateur bike race in the Austrian Alps that takes riders across 238km and a total altitude of 5500 metres.

Athletes who joined were challenged to cycle a total distance of 238km between 17th August and 1st September - on completion, athletes received a digital finisher’s badge, a €20 discount voucher in the PowerBar webstore, and the chance to win a range of great prizes (including an exclusive ROSE bike worth €2,300).

PowerBar’s previous cycling challenge in 2013 was targeted globally and ran for over a month, attracting 42,982 participants. The more recent cycling challenge was targeted specifically to Germany and Austria alone and ran for two weeks, but garnered over 33,000 participants. Over 10,000 users entered email addresses to redeem the reward after successfully completing the challenge.

In a post-challenge review, PowerBar reported a remarkable uplift of 34% in e-commerce sales from the challenge, with the viral joining effect of the sponsored challenge exposing thousands of new athletes to the brand. Considering that at the time the challenge was live, the PowerBar e-commerce offering was only available to residents of Germany and Austria, the exposure and ROI of the challenge went far beyond the brand’s expectations.
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The PowerBar Europe Strava Club continues to grow and will act as a pivotal hub for future campaigns.