Faema: Revitalising a historic brand

Faema is an Italian brand specializing in the manufacture of high quality coffee machines. The company is famous across Italy and beyond for the quality of its products amongst discerning coffee drinkers, as well as cafe, bar and restaurant owners. The brand also has a rich and fabled heritage among Italian cycling fans, most notably due to the Faema-sponsored team and their talisman Eddy Merckx winning the Giro d’Italia as his first Grand Tour victory.

As well as rekindling a well-loved brand, the activation aimed to raise funds for World Bicycle Relief, a non-profit organisation specialised in large-scale bicycle distribution programmes to help reduce poverty where even the most basic links are lacking. The brand aimed to celebrate a rekindling of its relationship with the Giro, and a Strava Sponsored Challenge was seen as the perfect way to target passionate cyclists to engage with this iconic brand.‍

Like several other brands in the coffee industry, Faema has a close association with professional cycling, but their historical link to the Giro d’Italia and brand awareness amongst Italian cyclists marks them out as unique.

When it comes to reaching cyclists, there aren’t many better places to do this than Strava. Faema and their agency, Intarget, knew this, and decided to turn to Sponsored Challenges.

Why Strava

Like several other brands in the coffee industry, Faema has a close association with professional cycling, but their historical link to the Giro d’Italia and brand awareness amongst Italian cyclists marks them out as unique.

When it comes to reaching cyclists, there aren’t many better places to do this than Strava. Faema and their agency, Intarget, knew this, and decided to turn to Sponsored Challenges.

With a goal of getting cyclists to engage with the Faema brand, they chose to partner with World Bicycle Relief to provide an incentive for users to participate, donating a significant amount once a collective goal of 120,000km was reached.

Impact

The goal of the challenge was a collective distance of 120,000km, but the actual result was more than 7 million, delighting both Faema and their agency. And with over 300,000 unique impressions and almost 30,000 joiners, the brand felt strongly that this was a powerful way to get Faema in front of the already highly targeted Strava audience.

The results delighted the brand’s team, significantly surpassing expectations and supercharging brand engagement across their Italian target audience.

Learnings and next steps

Faema’s use of Sponsored Challenges was part of a larger strategy to engage their active audience, including sponsorship of the Giro d’Italia. With their sponsorship continuing into 2024, there are discussions ongoing for a fresh challenge on Strava to build on their successful previous activation.