And a couple of good ones, too...
And a couple of good ones, too...
Garmin: The Edge
If there’s one company that knows how to make a good cycling-related advert it’s Garmin. Sponsoring a pro team helps, because if you have David Millar, Ryder Hesjedal, Andrew Talansky and Dan Martin on tap, that’s as good a place to start as any.
They also do a really good job of using the ad to plug the products. Watch the video then think about the features that are shown; they actually manage to fit quite a few in. Never mind that the live tracking is something that most of us will never use, it’s really hard to watch the advert without thinking that it’s quite a cool feature whether or not you’d ever use it. You can start the ad feeling ambivalent about the device and four minutes later you want one. Well played, Garmin.
Skoda
For so long, Skoda’s cars were the butt of jokes, but these days they not only make award-winning cars they do a pretty good line in adverts, too.
Having provided cars for almost all the teams (bar Sky and their fancy Jaguars) as well as the neutral service vehicles, the Czech firm decided to capitalise on their record of never having had a car break down on the Tour and made this advert. Which, as adverts go, is pretty good really, and definitely gives a good idea of the beating that a car can take on a World Tour race!