I’ve followed with interest the emergence of Rock Racing over the past little while.  Regardless of what you think of Michael Ball, he certainly knows how to go about promoting a brand.  After all, the whole Rock Racing business is, in a significant part, geared towards promoting his Rock & Republic clothing brand.

This got me thinking - perhaps the bike industry should take a leaf out of the clothing industries book as a way of promoting their brands and increasing the take up of cycling.  Clothing brands give away their clothes to celebrities in the hope they will wear them, get snapped by the paparazzi and have a legion of wannabes go out and by their clothes so they can look like Britney.

Matthew McConaughy, courtesy of his frienship with Lance Armstrong, has been snapped repeatedly on a bike - I’m reckoning most people have seen a photo similar to this one:

Matt McConnaughy looking buff on a bike

Seeing celebs on bikes normalises the activity for much of the population.  We’ll overlook the fact that most of us don’t look like Mr McConaughy, nor should he be riding without a helmet, but hey - I’ll take any publicity for biking I can get.

No imagine Britney Spears being photographed on a cool cruiser, riding down a beachside strip.  I can see the legions of teenage girls tugging on daddy’s sleeve asking can they please get a cruiser too?  An enterprising company like Electra could even do a Britney signature edition.

Britney being Britney, I’m guessing it probably wouldn’t take too long before there were some compromising pictures of her on a cruiser - you can imagine all the young boys buying the male version of the Britney signature edition and telling their mates they went for a ride on Britney that morning.

I’m always amazed when I pick up a gossip mag and flick through the pictures and the commentary associated.  No detail goes unnoticed - the blurred handbag hanging over the bedpost is zoomed in, digitally enhanced and found to be the latest offering from Louis Vuitton.  Cha-ching go the cash registers.  Imagine the latest Paris Hilton sex tape with her beautiful custom Baum Ristretto in the background and all the magazines wondering if that is how Paris stays in shape and manages to bend like that.

It’s not just the gossip mag celebs.  AFL and rugby players now use cycling as a way of staying fit in the off season and getting low impact cardio workouts in.  Imagine giving some bikes to the WWE superstars - wrestlers on bikes.  Whilst you’d want to make sure the wheels were double walled and reinforced, some young kid seeing his wrestling superhero on a bike has got to have a positive impact.

Bikes get given to people who already have bikes.  This is great, and supports cyclists, triathletes and the like.  But if the point is to get mass-market acceptance of your product and increase total demand for bikes, I reckon there’s no better way than getting some trashy celebs riding your bikes.

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