Specialized: Expanding the Brand

Specialized Asia is the Asian branch for Specialized Bicycle Components, an industry-leading, high-performance bike brand serving a wide range of cyclists across every discipline. They are “built by riders, for riders”, and this ethos has guided the business’ every decision since 1974. 

The Challenge

With the Specialized Allez Sprint: #NeverNotRiding Challenge, Specialized Asia challenged Strava athletes to ride a minimum of 3 times per week for 3 weeks to redeem a discount voucher for a chance to win one of the new Allez Sprints. Cyclists in Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, China, and Japan were targeted in this challenge and were eligible to redeem the reward upon completion.

Why Strava?

Specialized Asia felt Strava would be a crucial platform to leverage to meet their marketing objectives for the new Allez Sprint launch and beyond, as the business’ core audience lives on Strava. Since not all Strava athletes are longtime performance cyclists (many are commuters & recreational cyclists), Specialized Asia saw an opportunity to reach a wider audience of cyclists, especially those who were previously unaware of the brand before, to highlight the brand’s qualities and offerings. 

How Did They Promote the Challenge Outside of Strava?

Specialized Asia promoted the challenge on all of their social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, syncing their campaign with the overarching global launch. They leveraged a lot of their global ambassadors, including Justin Williams and his LEGION team to drive awareness of the Strava challenge externally and bring in more challenge joins. Specialized Asia made sure to highlight the new Allez Sprint, the bike they wanted to promote, in all of their external communications. Additionally, they opted to invest in a pre-challenge email campaign sent out to the targeted Strava audience to go join the challenge. This not only helped in promoting boosting challenge joins and reward redemptions, but also enabled Strava athletes to learn about the new Allez Sprint and everything else the brand has to offer.

Impact

Strava users responded extremely positively to the #NeverNotRiding challenge, with athletes outside the targeted countries participating in the challenge and keen on redeeming the reward. Specialized Asia saw a 2.21 ROI on the challenge, with 61.3 percent of eligible finishers redeeming the challenge reward. Another huge win centered around club growth. Specialized Asia created a new Strava club and saw a surge in club joins as a result of #NeverNotRiding, growing their club to 8,026 members over the duration of the challenge. While this is the first time Specialized Asia ran a sponsored challenge on Strava, other Specialized regions have run sponsored challenges in the past. As a result of this challenge, the global brand was able to garner 116,300 first time challenge participants, ensuring that they occupy greater mindshare of Strava users who may not have been familiar with the brand earlier. This is a long-lasting investment in ensuring that the Specialized Asia builds on this initial Sponsored Challenge and continually engages with their audience on Strava.