Skip to main content

Marketing Everyday Cycling

Danish Bicycle Culture Promotion 1995
This Danish advert promoting everyday cycling is from 1995. It's interesting from a marketing perspective and not a little rare. Usually well-known racing cyclists are enlisted to sell 'gear' and cycling as a sport.

This advert features the Danish racing cyclist Jesper Skibby. By the way, he's the only Dane and one of few professional cyclists to have won stages in the Big Three - Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espana.

In Danish the Vuelta is called Spanien Rundt, or All Around Spain.

The advert rhymes in Danish so my translations are often rendered lame but here goes:

"It's hard to ride all around Spain [hard to ride the Vuelta is what that means]"

"And healthy to ride all year round"

Next to Jesper is the text "Jesper Skibby, winner of the 9th stage of the Vuelta a Espana".

I like the way that a racing cyclist and an everyday cyclist - in the form of the iconic Cycling Girl so well known in Danish history - are presented as equals. As though they each can inspire each other and they are both hardy and deserve respect. A refreshing lack of elitism.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

7550 New Bike Parking Spots at Copenhagen Central Station

For all of Copenhagen's badassness as a bicycle city, there remains one thing that the City still completely sucks at. Bicycle parking at train stations. At Copenhagen Central Station there are only about 1000 bike parking spots. Danish State Railways can't even tell us how many spots they have. They're not sure. Even in Basel they have 800+. In Antwerp they have this . Don't even get me started on the Dutch. 12,500 bike parking spots are on the way in some place called Utrecht . Amsterdam has a multi-story bike parking facility, floating bicycle barges round the back and are planning 7000 more spots underwater . Even at the nation's busiest train station, Nørreport, the recent and fancy redesign failed miserably in providing parking that is adequate for the demand . Architects once again failing to respond to actual urban needs. It is time to remedy that. Here is my design for 7550 bike parking spots behind Copenhagen Central Station. Steve C. Montebello i...
Read more

The Race for Lithium for Electric Cars and Bicycles

Uyuni Salt Flats, Bolivia. Photo: Ezequiel Cabrera/Wikipedia The coming boom in batteries to electric cars and Lazy Bikes (electric-assist bicycles) means a boom in batteries with which to run them. A new race for natural resources has begun. Enter Lithium, the world's lightest metal. For 150 years it's been nickel and lead that have been used in batteries but the advent of lithium technology has allowed for a revolution. Longer battery life, lighter batteries in our laptaps and mobile phones and iPods. Lithium weighs 1/20th of what nickel and lead do. Lithium is also used in anti-depressive medicine, ceramics and nuclear power. With all this talk of electric cars and bicycles, the demand for lithium is on the verge of exploding. Lithium is the new oil. Enter Boliva. This developing country sits on at least half of the world's supply of lithium, most of it in underground salt layers beneath the world's largest salt flats in Salar de Uyuni , in south-west Boliva. Betwee...
Read more

Bicycle Superhighways in Copenhagen Capital Region

The Bicycle Superhighway Network in Copenhagen Capital Region. Orange: Built. Black: Planned and financed. Dotted: Planned but awaiting financing. The Capital Region of Denmark is continuing its investment in Supercykelstier - or Bicycle Super Highways. With five new routes completed on May 2, 2017, 115 kilometers have been added to the three initial routes. The goal is to make inter-municipality bike trips easier for the citizens of the region. The super highways are being developed on largely pre-existing cycle tracks. In the Capital Region, 60% of all trips less than 5 km are made by bike. This falls to 20% for trips more than 5 km. While the region is great for intermodality, connecting bikes with trains, the plans for the Bicycle Super Highway network target increasing the latter number through constructing 28 routes that connect and pass through 23 municipalities. These will give bicycle users newer, wider cycle tracks, better street surfaces, pre-green lights, in addition...
Read more