Trek Women Who Ride

[Geonz]

There's also a very, very blurry line between journalism or literature and advertising. WHen the "advertising" is a year-long blog, it's going to be more like the former.

[slmdunc]

There's also a very, very blurry line between journalism or literature and advertising. WHen the "advertising" is a year-long blog, it's going to be more like the former.

Really? Do you truly believe that the Trek campaign will become a form of journalism? Because it is in blog form for a given length of time?

My personal line between literature, journalism and advertising is not at all blurry... maybe that's just me.

[sgtiger]

I think we're having two entirely different discussions here. Some of us are focusing on the featured women themselves and some of us are focusing on Trek's marketing decisions. Both arguments have their validity.

It's true that nothing happens on accident in advertising. I don't doubt at all that Trek spent $$$ to hire a marketing firm to maximize their profits. And, yeah, they decided to capture their share of a growing market segment. Maybe there's even some resentment about being looked at as a marketing sector instead of as a person or a cyclist or what have you. I could be wrong on that part, but I can understand it because I have on occasion thought to myself looking at an ad, "Hmm... what are they trying to say here? Are they only featuring this person [insert demographic here] in the hopes of getting my money?"

However, these are real women. (At least, I hope they're not fabricated! Like that's never happened. ) Their experiences are real, although they probably signed a contract to portray Trek in a positive light in order to be considered. (Take a look at the fine print of any contest rules.) They are struggling with some of the things that we're struggling with and have shared on this forum. Such as finding time to ride around a demanding job, family, training for a Tri, overcoming challeges such as disease and trying to be more fit. I feel that if we only focus on why these women were chosen as opposed to the women themselves then we invalidate who these women are.

I could also point out that this forum is a form of advertisement for Team Estrogen. I'm sure it cost money in the way of hardware, hosting software and staffing [Thank-you Jeff!] to keep these boards operational. They probably get back their costs many times over in the forms of sales garnered from forum participants. And they have used information gleaned from this forum to determine what products to carry. Of course, they've never hidden that fact. Susan O, a buyer for TE and a forum participant herself, has from time to time, posted that they'll be carrying such and such product because of the buzz created by our posts.

How many us ,participating on this forum, have not clicked on the above link to browse the products that TE carries? Or directed someone looking for a product to take a look at TE first? Or bought an item from TE?

[Zen]

If Trek wants to make this work as advertising I don't see how it could possibly work as it is. We don't read the blogs because we already know women like this.
What might work would be a lead-in advertisement. One page, a studio shot of a woman and her bike. A short paragraph about the woman written to target the audience for a particular type of magazine. Then something along the lines of "read about other women who ride at Trek.com" Advertising and outreach.
In my utopia, it would be nice to have a diversified outreach program. many of the comments here reflect a lack of diversity in some cycling communities and I'd like to see something done to change that. Trek's business is to sell bikes yes, but maybe they would find a wider market and sell more bikes? I don't know.

Imagine.