Gocycle
ABOUT
They say you can’t re-invent the wheel or re-design the bicycle. Gocycle did both. And Pull made Gocycle cool.
Gocycle is the lightest, cleanest, cleverest electric bicycle you can buy and the brainchild of former McLaren Cars designer Richard Thorpe.
Pull re-positioned Gocycle as a masterpiece of highly desirable automotive engineering. Now owned and ridden by Cristiano Ronaldo, Cara Delavigne, Eddie Jordan and Chris Evans, Gocycle used to move the body – it now moves the soul (and sells a lot more bikes).
CHALLENGE
Richard Thorpe knew he had a winner, but was uneasy about Gocycle’s ‘Performance Commuting’ brand platform, on which the product competed head-on with much cheaper e-bikes. So he came to Pull.
The electric bike market is a rapidly emerging one and grew by 25% in 2015, making it the fastest growing category of vehicles. Early adopters tend to be seen as somewhat eccentric and often environmentally motivated.
SOLUTION
However, after studying Gocycle consumers, we discovered that they weren’t eco-warriors or even typically commuters. Conversely, they were well-heeled gadget lovers and petrolheads, trendsetters with an eye for unconventional but brilliant automotive engineering.
So Pull developed a completely new brand platform for Gocycle, repositioning it as we would a luxury brand across a range of channels including a striking brochure, a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, a lifestyle app and a revamped social media presence.
We made the product the hero in all brand marketing collateral, and developed a copy strategy to emphasise the ‘automotive joy’ that is a ride on a Gocycle. Lifestyle imagery was replaced with hero shots of the product, and short and powerful messages highlighting the bike’s extraordinary technical features replaced dense copy about the practicalities of commuting on a Gocycle.
GOCYCLE BROCHURE
The new positioning and brochure delighted Gocycle’s sales channels as well as Gocycle, and helped the company to reach beyond traditional cycle and e-bike retailers to gain distribution in high-end car showrooms and yacht chandlers (Gocycle is proving very popular with luxury yacht/motor-yacht owners keen to buy a prestigious port-side ride).
GOCYCLE APP
Unlike other electric bikes, Gocycle has an app which installs on the owner’s Smartphone. This contributes to the joy of ownership by allowing the owner to customise their ride with a swipe of the finger - altering the power/range equation to suit their need for power or distance. Pull is working to redevelop and redesign the Gocycle app to incorporate exciting new personal fitness information and other user stats.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Pull has also brought Gocycle to life on Social Media. Launching a new Facebook page for the brand via an integrated email marketing campaign, we added 1,000 Likes to the brand on the first day.
Social Media has since then become a hub for Gocycle resellers and fans to celebrate and promote the Gocycle brand together. We have supported and helped increase Gocycle’s presence across all the main Social Media platforms through campaigns and by posting content that the Gocycle target audience will love.
Gocycle has received sales enquiries from customers and potential resellers through Social Media as well, opening up new doors for their sales team.
KICKSTARTER
Pull were tasked to design and execute a digital marketing campaign to help launch a new lower-priced Gocycle via Kickstarter.com. The goal was to raise $250,000 in 5 weeks. The campaign was such a hit that after two weeks we opened the project up from aUS-only to a global audience, met our $250k target with 13 days to spare, and ultimately raised a grand total of $456k, leaving the project 182% funded.
RESULTS
As a direct result of the re-positioning, Gocycle achieved record sales in 2015 and again in 2016. Our digital advertising efforts reached 10.76 million people, sending just under 250,000 visits to the Gocycle GS Kickstarter page. Gocycle’s Facebook following increased by 67%, and what had been a niche UK fanbase became a truly global high-flying audience.
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