AusCycling engaged BBS as their communication and public relations partner to promote the fifth Brisbane Cycling Festival, with twin goals of driving audience attendance and awareness across the six-week event, and minimising media focus on event-related road closures and traffic disruptions.

BBS established a five-month long proactive media campaign which peaked at festival launch in April. Activities covered the festival’s program of international standard events including Tour de Brisbane, Track National Championships and the first ever esports Cycling Championship.

We collaborated with the festival management team to execute an integrated communications strategy across traditional media channels as well as earned social media channels.

BBS generated media coverage in drive-market, state-wide, interstate and international outlets, and professionally managed and coordinated several media activities including media calls and events management.

A core challenge for our strategy was general disinterest from the public and media in news about cycling. We creatively worked around this by implementing tailored pitch plans to media that leveraged their points of interest, for example, esports being part of an emerging billion-dollar technology industry in Australia. This approach led to coverage across multiple news channels including the Courier-Mail, Daily Telegraph, The Weekend Australian and the TODAY Show.

BBS also identified and managed the involvement of the festival’s first-ever ambassador, Katherine Bates.

Our campaign secured 58 individual pieces of coverage, accounting for $1.5m in PRV reaching 13.4m people, meeting AusCycling’s PR KPI and surpassing their reach goal of 511,500 people.