Brands today have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn up their mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties around major sports events. With YouTube, Twit­ter, Insta­gram, and emerg­ing plat­forms such as Periscope, brands have a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with engaged fans, thrill them with immer­sive, expe­ri­en­tial sto­ries, and bring their brand sto­ry to life. Who are the brands doing this the best at the Tour de France?

When it comes to active spec­ta­tors, the Tour de France is the most viewed sport in the world. This year’s course takes place from July 4 to 26, and spans 3,360 kilo­me­ters of open French and Dutch coun­try­side from the Grand Depart in Utrecht, to the surg­ing laps of Paris made by the pelo­ton in the race finale.

As a ball­park fig­ure, it’s expect­ed that some­where between 10 mil­lion and 20 mil­lion peo­ple will see the race live, some fol­low­ing the route across France and oth­ers watch­ing the Tour race past in the pic­turesque towns of the French coun­try­side. Glob­al audi­ence esti­mates are sketchy, but even con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mates of 2014 view­ing fig­ures put audi­ences at 1.4 bil­lion.

Accord­ing to fig­ures pub­lised by the York­shire Post, 2014’s Tour is expect­ed to have brought in media val­ue of $167 mil­lion for York­shire alone, last year’s hosts of the Grand Depart. For the top teams, the val­ue is even greater; British based Team Sky are esti­mat­ed to have brought in $556 mil­lion in 2013, spurred by Bradley Wig­gins vic­to­ry in the gen­er­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion, with “$407 mil­lion com­ing from TV, $86 mil­lion from online media, and $63 mil­lion from print.”

All in all, it makes for a prime oppor­tu­ni­ty for cer­tain brands to mar­ket to a high­ly engaged audi­ence across a three week peri­od. A high­ly effec­tive prac­tice for brands and spon­sors is to cre­ate immer­sive and expe­ri­en­tial con­tent around the Tour. It’s a tech­nique being fuelled by dig­i­tal media, which is increas­ing­ly being used to pro­vide an addi­tion­al per­spec­tive on the sport; team video diaries, “on-board” footage, and social media are being used very effec­tive­ly, giv­ing con­sumers oppor­tu­ni­ties to engage, and allow­ing them to feel involved.

For an immer­sive con­tent exam­ple, check out Giant Alpecin’s on-board footage of the Stage 5 crash and sprint prepa­ra­tion for the run in to Amiens:

Filmed on a GoPro, the style is rem­i­nis­cent of the cam­era man­u­fac­tur­er’s immer­sive, gonzo style, and indeed, GoPro has also released video con­tent of the Tour, albeit in much less chaot­ic cir­cum­stances:

A New Perspective

What adds pow­er and share­abil­i­ty to the con­tent in the above exam­ples? The videos pro­vide a per­spec­tive on pro­fes­sion­al cycling that isn’t gen­er­al­ly acces­si­ble to view­ers.

Video con­tent allows the brands to com­mu­ni­cate excite­ment and thrills in the heat of the moment, and pub­lish­ing on social media plat­forms makes them incred­i­bly acces­si­ble. Addtion­al­ly, the video con­tent adds a sto­ry­line for the inter­nal ele­ment of the Tour which is, appro­pri­ate­ly, the oper­at­ing space of the brands and spon­sors them­selves.

Spon­sors can now present more than just the logos on the cyclist’s jer­sey’s and team cars. Brands are able to tell rel­e­vant sto­ries around the sport, their day-to-day sup­port of  the teams and rid­ers, and their brand’s role in the sport.

ORICA GreenEDGE’s “mechan­ic cam” of the mas­sive Stage 3 pile up brings the hav­oc of the moment to vivid life. The video, which amassed more than 1 mil­lion views on the first day alone, also pro­vides a nar­ra­tive of the back­stage team’s mechan­ics and han­dlers that enable the race to con­tin­ue.

The key is in gen­er­at­ing con­sis­tent engage­ment on social media. Giv­ing con­sumers a chance to con­nect with brands, and even the rid­ers them­selves is can add a nice touch, and even more niche plat­forms can play a part.

For exam­ple, cycling data-geeks can use a ded­i­cat­ed cycling GPS app, Stra­va, to check out the speed, times, and pow­er read­ings uploaded by pro­fes­sion­al cyclists rid­ing the Tour, and see whether they would be able to keep up with the pros. Ded­i­cat­ed fans can check out the data on Andre Grie­pel’s  last kilo­me­ter on the run in to Amiens for before his stage win­ning sprint, for exam­ple.

While this large­ly inter­ests only the most ded­i­cat­ed of cycling fans, it shows how dig­i­tal media is enabling the pro­fes­sion­al cycling com­mu­ni­ty to con­nect and engage on a vari­ety of plat­forms.

Behind-The-Scenes Storytelling

In a broad­er sense, cycling spon­sors are effec­tive­ly using social media plat­forms. What’s impres­sive is the qual­i­ty and engage­ment poten­tial of the con­tent brands, and par­tic­u­lar­ly team spon­sors, are pro­duc­ing.

It can be as sim­ple as a selfie/tweet of the race lead­ers cus­tom yel­low han­dle­bar tape and bot­tles:

Well, you won’t miss @tonymartin85 today! All yel­low every­thing! Oblig­a­tory #self­ie before the start. #TDF2015 pic.twitter.com/LbUMtyA8IM

— Etixx — Quick-Step (@Etixx_QuickStep) July 8, 2015

Or as in the case of Team Sky, it’s in behind-the-scenes sto­ry­telling with­in team video diaries.

By pro­vid­ing a rich vari­ety of con­tent, spon­sors can max­i­mize the media val­ue of their brand. The Tour de France has a huge glob­al audi­ence, and is as pop­u­lar in the U.S. as it is in West­ern Europe, and with grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty in Africa and Asia – dig­i­tal media enables con­sumers from all over the world to enjoy and expe­ri­ence the sto­ries of the Tour.

Social Media Publishing

Per­haps the great­est exam­ple in recent years of social media pub­lish­ing was the Red Bull Stratos event, which saw Felix Baum­gart­ner under­take a record-break­ing free fall to Earth at super­son­ic speed. The stream attract­ed a record break­ing live audi­ence of 8 mil­lion to YouTube, and the con­tent is still pop­u­lar to this day.

More recent­ly, Bradley Wig­gin’s suc­cess­ful ‘Hour Record’ attempt sim­i­lar­ly set alight social media, run­ning with the hash­tag #myhour, encour­ag­ing a flur­ry of sup­port­ive mes­sages on Twit­ter and oth­er social media plat­forms. At the time Wig­gin’s cloth­ing spon­sor, Rapha, also set up a ded­i­cat­ed microsite encour­ag­ing ama­teur cyclists to com­mit to their own #myhour record attempts, tak­ing place at their glob­al net­work of cycling clubs and share them on the site.

In the past, brand sport spon­sor­ship may have depend­ed on broad­cast­ing mod­els and adver­tis­ing. But with the abil­i­ty to pub­lish con­tent on social media quick­ly and effi­cient­ly, this is no longer the case.

Rich dig­i­tal media, such as pho­tos, videos, offer a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to give view­ers a medi­um in which to con­nect and con­sume. Sports mar­ket­ing is a prime can­di­date for social media pub­lish­ing around an event as it’s pos­si­ble to con­nect with hyper-engaged audi­ences, at least for a fixed time peri­od, and give them the abil­i­ty to con­nect with their favorite teams.

Expe­ri­en­tial sports mar­ket­ing can be used to forge vibrant con­nec­tions with con­sumers, and buzz around a sport­ing event. It lets con­sumers feel more involved, and allows brands to tell their own sto­ries around the sport. Social media is a fan­tas­tic plat­form for brands to pub­lish immer­sive and expe­ri­en­tial con­tent, enlight­en­ing spec­ta­tors with addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion and nar­ra­tives, and giv­ing them every oppor­tu­ni­ty to view, share, and engage.