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The Vital MTB Crew
Why wouldn't you have a race team? when the parent company (Discovery) owns the rights to racing/races with UCI.
yeah Sesame Seed, you're fried on this one
unsure what a "normal rider" or "casual or focused athlete" is, but I'm assuming their money is just as green as whomever's watching Sam Pilgrim's videos. A quarter million views a week definitely sells bikes...and these youtubers produce their little reality magazines all themselves too.
Totally agree as much as I love racing there is not going to be 250,000 people who see what bike the DH world champ was riding. Sam can have that many people see what bike he is riding in a single video.
On big riding trips, having a few beers after riding the park all day and laughing at Sams videos has provided me and my "normal rider casual or focused athlete" friends some really good laughs.
shane leslie on KHS
Chris Akrigg has just posted that he is moving from GT!
Move back to Mongoose ?
More chance he will move to Canyon or Santa Cruz
I think it's pretty unlikely that he'd wind up with Santa Cruz given all the non-race athletes they've recently let go. Especially considering how well known the 50-01 crew is.
PON own Mongoose as well so I don't see that happening.
Does anyone have insights into how much brands and influencers know about the viewers for a particular influencer? It’s my understanding that this is a bit of an unknown, and it makes it difficult to value an athlete purely based on views. It could be that Sam is producing entertainment for a largely non-riding crowd that will be unlikely to buy MTB products, while a Remy Metailler has a higher probability of sale per view. However, I guess it could also be the case that Sam is reaching an audience that could be brought into the sport an need an entire kit, while Remy is reaching people who may not need a new bike/fork/helmet/etc. for a while.
In general, I don’t think we know how to value social media yet. Just consider all the recent volatility in the going rate for influencer sponsored posts in much more mature retail segments. Between increased consumer protections by Apple and EU governments and the simple difficulty of trying to guess whether a purchase was “influenced,” it’s really hard to say what types of content are the most valuable, and whether comparing WC DH view numbers to YouTube video numbers is an apples-to-apples comparison.
The level of absolute shite posted here this rumour season has me sick to my stomach. Remember 6-7 years ago? Remember how much fun this was? I blame the riders for not changing teams enough.
And pinkbike
That's definitely the black magic of marketing in general, in my opinion. That's why so many bean counter types want to do the referral codes and crap like that for their athletes/ambassadors. Because then you can trace a direct correlation between a given athlete/influencer and their sales. With influencers who are doing general marketing/advertising, it's more difficult to draw a direct correlation... but we are definitely moving in the direction of being able to track that sort of thing as customer information and purchase date gets harvested and tracked.
In short: they can probably track macrotrends over time, but it's likely hard to say, "If we hire Sam Pilgrim, we expect to see a X% uptick in market share."
Very true. However, compared to the old days where a brands marketing initiatives came with virtually ZERO traceable metrics (magazine ads, event sponsorship/presence/signage, etc.) at least now we have data to work with. I'm old enough to remember the days of spending a few thousand bucks for a magazine ad...
Remember when each brand simply wanted the fastest racers, and Vital(littermag) would make the raddest slideshows about the World Cups that made you feel like you were actually there..
Simpler times perhaps, if only we knew how good we had it back then.
Chris is the only guy out there I watch every YouTube video he puts out without fail. Definitely a niche rider but will be interesting to see where he ends up.
Moi moi in what looks like a fox half face lid on his IG story
true, but also with TLD knee guards.
I haven’t seen this posted yet, but with Minnaar off of 5.10, it seem Gwin swapped sponsors from Giro to 5.10. In the new HP6 video posted by Intense, Gwin is wearing what looks like new model colors of the Hellcat Pro.
gwin has been using 5.10 for the whole season, didn‘t renew his giro- contract and wanted to try something else, he said so in one of his yt videos. don‘t know if he‘s sponsored by 5.10 or buying stuff by himself.
Random question, is it known who the timing partner will be for races in the 2023 season?
Also you can just see the front of a renthal stem. I know of one company that uses renthal on their builds. YT.
Hhhhhmmmm click bait?
Well, since no one has stated the obvious yet (that I have seen), it is currently on the Vital home page. Look like Jack Moir is on Intense Factory Racing now.
This is some serious sleuthing, but yes. This absolutely looks like a renthal stem. Not even two pixels are safe from the Vital forums!
It is also worth recognising who Pilgrim appeals to vs racers/ex racers. Pilgrim has a large cut through with 'da yoof' - while I am not interested in his antics (late 40s), when I speak to my teenage nieces and nephews (all of whom ride), they are not overly interested in a video of some technical rock roll in Canada but they can recount in detail the latest idiocy from Pilgrim.
While even he could not make Haibike desirable to that age group, Canyon is a different matter. I was interested to see that his launch vid was not on the most expensive carbon bike in the range but instead an ali frame - more affordable, more relatable to a younger audience saving up to get their first proper MTB/jump/dirt bike and being able to buy their heroes bike
The more significant part of the announcement for me was that he is leaving Cycling Sports Group after 15 years - assume that as part of the take over by PON they agreed to see out the contracts in place for a certain time period and are now clearing them out. Although Akrigg produces some fantastic content, much of it paving the way for what a lot of todays names like Danny and Fabio are producing, I am not sure how much cut through he would be getting in the eyes of a massive parent company like PON - he strikes me as one of those riders who is known by those who know but not so much by a casual or newcomer viewer.
This is the correct take in my opinion. Pilgrim is going to sell bikes for Canyon and at the same time he might be able to get back into competition on bikes built for the riding he wants to do. I don't know why he went with Haibike, they probably offered a sweet deal. But in the ensuing years the power of social media and his channel are clear, so Canyon is forking out the money to bring him on to help sell their products to youth a new riders. It's a great partnership for both of them.
Yep. And if you look at their other signings like Brad Simms, Fabio and the Japanese trials riders, it’s clear that their strategy is to expand the customer base beyond traditional markets, not to fight over the existing market. Whether that strategy will pay off or not, I don’t know, but it’s clearly the direction they’ve chosen to go.
The dropper cable is from OneUp
That's a video from 5 years ago...
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