Slipstream: Putting Professional Cycling Back on Track
Challenge: Professional cycling has been embattled by doping scandals for more than a decade. As a result, sponsor after sponsor has walked away from profitable teams and races, leaving athletes and directors without careers, and fans without role models. Slipstream Sports, a professional sports management company, came to Peppercom because it wanted to give sponsors and fans alike a reason to re-invest in the sport and specifically, in Team Slipstream-Chipotle, the company's professional cycling property.
Strategy & Execution: Peppercom built a hard-hitting media relations campaign by posing the question: Is it possible to build loyalty and trust in a sport that has poisoned itself? The answer was yes, but that Slipstream Sports needed to regain the trust of reporters, who had - like fans and sponsors - been burned by the sport they had dedicated their lives to covering. Peppercom began by helping Slipstream launch the most progressive anti-doping program in the professional sports world, and giving reporters full access to all testing results. The media was given unprecedented access to athletes, doctors, riders and training camps. For the first time in cycling history, reporters were even allowed to room with athletes during key races and be embedded with the team during the Tour de France.
Result: More than a billion media impressions were achieved in 2008 alone. More than 300,000 fans subscribed to the team's newsletter and Web traffic averaged 4,000 visitors a day. Hundreds of thousands of fans follow the team's Twitter updates and riders’ individual Facebook pages. Best of all, the positive media coverage achieved has effected change within the peloton. In 2008, at least two other professional cycling teams implemented programs similar to Slipstream's. And as a result of the team's clean image, the squad was invited to the 2008 Tour de France, where it was dubbed the "media darling" of the Tour. Shortly after the Tour invitation was issued, the team signed a title sponsor, and Slipstream-Chipotle became Team Garmin-Chipotle, proving again that clean wins.
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