Many people like to use a bicycle. But nobody really likes to maintain and repair their own bike. Swapfiets, the world’s first bicycle-as-a-service or ‘bike membership’, was born 2014 in the Netherlands. Coming 2018 to the German market, a country full of automobile fanatics, Swapfiets contracted Big Bang & Whisper to create a launch campaign while opening new Swapfiets stores across the country. How to make Germans truly love to ride a bicycle? We found an answer!
Strategy
Big Bang & Whisper started to work for Swapfiets in April 2019 and developed the brand becoming the leading bike membership in Germany.
By strictly focusing on regional PR to create buzz in cities across Germany where Swapfiets is available, we laid the foundation for broader, national communications, creating a true brand community of Swapfiets customers, dedicated to use bicycles more often while relying on a unique personal service.
Project
PR Launch in Germany
Client
Swapfiets
What We Did
Brand Development, Public Relations
More than 1.300 earned media articles and TV and radio appearances
By end of 2019, purely earned media with more than 1.300 media articles and programmes across Germany reached an audience of more than 260 million people. In 2020 these results were even exceeded.
Blue Tires
at Tour de France
As lead agency, Big Bang & Whisper staged one of the biggest PR stunts for Amsterdam-based bike subscription company Swapfiets. For Tour de France 2021, Swapfiets made its iconic blue tire appear on Team Jumbo-Visma bikes to promote cycling in daily life. As a result, we created staged media attacks across 8 markets in Europe with more than 100 earned media clippings and ten thousands of social media engagements.
Earned media results
1283
Number of Clippings in 2019
2323
Number of Clippings in 2020
550
Number of Clippings until mid 2021
261
Reach in millions in 2019
647
Reach in millions in 2020
86
Reach in millions until mid 2021
