“We are very pleased with these awards,” said Stefan Büscher, Head of Marketing and Product at ŠKODA. “The great success of this viral video demonstrates that we were right in deciding to explore new avenues and implement fresh ideas into our customer communications,” Büscher continued.
The video, titled ‘European Bike Stealing Championship 2015’, went viral in autumn last year. It uses humour to raise awareness about bike theft throughout Europe. Mustard, a Prague-based content agency, is responsible for the campaign, which received more than three million views worldwide.
The annual presentation of the D&AD Awards forms the highlight of the ‘Design and Art Direction’ association’s international marketing festival. ŠKODA’s video has been awarded the ‘Wooden Pencil’ at this year’s festival.
Innovative and groundbreaking content from all over the world is honoured at the annual Digiday Content Marketing Awards in New York – just like the ‘European Bike Stealing Championship 2015’ viral campaign.
Each year, the Czech Art Directors Club awards the prestigious ADC Creative Awards to particularly creative advertising agencies. For a long time, the prize was called ‘Louskáček’ – in English: ‘nutcracker’. This year, the anti-bike-theft campaign from ‘We Love Cycling’ and ŠKODA took home several of the top prizes: as well as the coveted ‘Grand Prix’ title, the jury also awarded the online cycling magazine’s video the gold medal for the best online film as well as the bronze medal in the ‘Branded Content’ category.
With the prize-winning ‘European Bike Stealing Championship 2015’ viral video and numerous articles, ‘We Love Cycling’ aimed to raise awareness among bike owners throughout Europe of the problem of bike theft and to encourage a debate on the subject. For the entertaining video, three bikes were set as bait in Prague, Amsterdam and Rome. Thieves, who just couldn’t resist the temptation, were filmed by a hidden camera. The pilferers were in for a surprise: as soon as they laid their hands on someone else’s property, a band appeared out of nowhere and struck up a fanfare. The puzzled reaction of the small-time criminals was very entertaining to the video’s three million viewers. The live commentary and running clock added to the excitement: it showed in which of the three European cities the bike was stolen first. The video skilfully used elements of live sports reporting, as well as elements of reality TV shows.
With ‘We Love Cycling’, ŠKODA offers active cyclists a modern and diverse online magazine with fascinating stories about bikes. Furthermore, the online community facilitates a lively exchange of views and discussions about specialist topics. The ‘European Bike Stealing Championship 2015’ is available to watch online.
