Our challenge was to torture test the Carrera Virago bike from Halfords, taking it on a mini-tour de France, ridden by amateur cyclist Dan Francis – hence the name: Tour de Francis.

TV sponsorship idents are 5, 10 and 15 seconds long – not nearly long enough for us to tell the story. So we created a 15' documentary that lived online, and we used the TV idents as mini-trailers leading to the full length film.

We had a bigger story than sponsorship idents alone could tell, so we created a 15-minute documentary that lived on Halfords’ YouTube and Facebook channels, using the TV idents as mini-trailers pushing viewers to see the full-length film online.

We ran 24 idents, phased in 3 weekly groups of 8 for the duration of the Tour de France. These ran during the live coverage and highlights shows, gradually revealing more of the story, in keeping with the real Tour de France itself.

We placed online advertising on the ITV3 website and on the ITV Player site. Extensive PR coverage including interviews with Dan Francis in cycling, industry and national press led users to the online documentary.

Placing the film on Facebook and YouTube made it easy for viewers to share the film. The film received two Staff Picks on Vimeo, gaining plenty of exposure and positive reactions.

As a result of the campaign, we achieved:

60% increase in Carrera sales

70% increase in visits to Halfords.com

284% increase in Virago product views online

14.7% increase in overall bike sales

56% of Facebook fans engaged or interacted with Halfords

£320,000 increase in sales of premium bikes

Extensive coverage in national, cycling and industry press