Auckland Transport Cycling and Walking unveils new ‘I Love My Ride’ campaign via Federation
Hot on the heels of the successful It’s All Go campaign for Auckland Transport Cycling and Walking (AT), Federation has launched I Love My Ride.
The campaign is designed to inspire everybody to get out and use Auckland’s new cycleway infrastructure.
With the onset of summer, it’s the best time of year to motivate people to start riding bikes. Federation and AT want to engage a wide audience and show that cycling is for everyone. The campaign showcases the real-life Aucklanders behind the bikes – from twenty-year-olds making their way to Uni, to seventy-year-olds going out to local cafes. For these people, a bike is part of their everyday life. AT wants everyone to see how easy bike riding is, and why you’d want to have a bike in your life too.
Federation has built the campaign around the colourful and diverse culture of cycling that already exists in Auckland. People from all walks of life – who LOVE riding and whose bikes are an extension of their personality. This campaign is an expression of the normalisation of cycling; all types of people are out there doing it, and loving it.
Federation has created a highly visible, impactful campaign to genuinely connect with Aucklanders. It was launched with a series of magazine ads in Paperboy and Canvas, along with street posters, digital display and extensive social. The campaign leads to a simple content platform with stories, photos, cycling promos, links to social and local event information – a place for people to start a conversation and share their enthusiasm for biking from A to B. In social, Auckland’s cyclists are also invited to participate and tell us their own biking story.
It’s early days yet – the social is just gathering momentum and the campaign will feature extensively on digital Adshels across Auckland in February. But so far engagement with – and feedback on – the campaign has been very positive. Participants are proudly sharing their stories, something Federation knew was key to the campaign’s success. It’s why the agency is careful to work respectfully with all participants to make sure they’re happy with how they are represented. The campaign has also already been noticed internationally, with ‘Modacity’ in Canada commenting: “We adore this simple, effective campaign from @AKLtransport. How is your city promoting the bike life?”
2 Comments
There are very few safe cycle commuting routes in my area. I see no progress and nothing on the planned roadmap for this area. As an ebiker I would like to see more happening in this Ellerslieto central and Ellerslie to sandringham directions. I regularly go to dominiion rd from Michaels Avenue. There are short sections of good cycle ways that suddenly disappear. There really needs to be cycleways the length of Greenlane/ Balmoral Rd, The length of Remuera Rd, Abbots Way, Great South Rd etc, The cycle ways on Ladies mile, Abbotts Way and so on here disappear when they are most needed – at intersections. While West gets more and more cycleways slightly east of central gets nothing. And whats alarming is there seems to be nothing in the roadmap. Marua Rd was recently resealed. No provision for cyclist was made and worse still the bend at the top with a negative camber was made worse for cyclists with a bizarre raised bit. Road design needs to universally consider cycles – ebikes are coming and make even hilly Auckland cyclable.
Have you been able to quantify the effectiveness of your campaign yet? We (city of Alameda, CA–across the bay from San Francisco) are about to start a campaign to get people out of their cars and onto bikes, their feet, and mass transit. Ironically, we came up with the same concept as you have done–though we argue back and forth about whether a photo of a group vs. and individual would be more effective. Do you know if this approach was effective? Any thoughts would be much appreciated!
Thanks a lot,
Pat Potter
Bike Walk Alameda