With their recent success in the World Cup many people could be forgiven for thinking that Spaniards will only have eyes for their footballers, but the truth is somewhat different. With Spaniard Alberto Contador winning his third Tour de France, he is now feted just as much as his compatriot footballers. This will be news to most people outside Europe, but in the EU cycling equals and often surpasses football for popularity.

That the Tour de France rivals the football World Cup for Europeans’ affections reflects the Tour’s status as the world’s greatest example of events-based marketing and one that will truly astonish any marketer unfamiliar with the history of the race.

These days, most brands choose to sponsor sporting events, or sometimes create them themselves, mainly for reasons of branding and awareness. Find or develop an event that represents the values that chime with your brand, and with the same target market, and set about building something with better cut-through and customer appreciation than traditional advertising alone. Also up for grabs are the gold stars for being a socially-responsible corporate and undoubtedly a few tax breaks along the way.

But these examples pale in comparison to the Tour de France, which deserves to be regarded as one of the greatest marketing initiatives of last century. The origins of the Tour stem from a tough marketing challenge facing the owner of the French newspaper L’Auto-Vélo back in 1903. This was due to a court mandate ordering the newspaper to remove the word Velo (bicycle) from its title because of its similarity to a competing newspaper, Le Vélo. Not only was the newspaper owner Henri Desgrange thereby faced with losing the enormous cycling-focused portion of his readership, but he was already having to overcome the predicted summer slump in readership that came with the end of the football season.

The answer was both unprecedented in its boldness yet also a logical, calculated marketing move – Desgrange’s cycling journalist Géo Lefèvre conceived of a bicycle race like none other to date. For starters, the route took over a month to complete, meaning that interest in the race and thus its marketing reach extended far beyond the more typical one-day races. Secondly, the route went throughout much of France, ensuring that the event’s popularity reached into even the smallest village. Thirdly, in an era with no internet, TV or mobile radio broadcasts, the only way in which people could follow the race was of course through Desgrange’s newspaper. Rather than just reporting the news, Desgrange closed the circle by creating the very event that needed to be reported upon.

Thus the first Tour de France began in July 1903 and has been run every year since, barring the war years. Because of the time and financial costs of competing and the high media exposure of the sport, cycling quickly became one of the world’s first professional sports. Circulation of Desgrange’s newspaper rose from 25,000 to 65,000 and by 1908 it was 250,000, peaking at 854,000 during the 1933 Tour. The competing newspaper may have been able to keep the name Le Vélo, but it was forced to close down.

Consider now the following statistics of the world’s largest annual marketing (sorry, sporting) event:
•    Each tour has over 15 million roadside spectators;
•    There are 3,600 media accreditations, across 102 television channels and 76 radio stations, representing 25 countries;
•    The race is broadcast on live television in 168 countries;
•    Journalists from over 450 newspapers, photo agencies and websites follow the event in person;
•    There are almost 10 million visits to the official website during the course of the tour.
•    Daily TV coverage requires four helicopters, two aircraft, two motorcycles, and 35 other vehicles including trucks, and 20 podium cameras.

As well as media coverage, for which the Tour was invented, the race owners have also taken every opportunity available (and often invented their own) to increase the income of the event.  Every sign along the route is sponsored and many of the towns that the race pass through have to bid for the status like so many Olympic hopefuls.  In 1930 the organisers introduced the publicity caravan, a 20km long parade of over 40 floats that drive along the route in front of the riders exposing their brands to the millions of roadside spectators, 39% of whom primarily attend for the caravan itself. This caravan is clearly a sizeable marketing event in its own right, with over 600 people giving away 16 million branded gifts. Advertisers spend up to US$1million for exposure in the caravan.

Finally, any commentary on marketing today would be amiss if social media were not mentioned. In Europe, pro cyclists are lauded as much as the All Blacks are in New Zealand or Manchester United in England, and most are keenly aware of their personal brand power – they are billboards on wheels after all, and always having to think of their end-of-season contract negotiations. To that end, most are highly active with their social media presence. Lance Armstrong for example has 2.5 million Twitter followers and 1.3 million Facebook followers alone. Fans now have a direct link to their sporting heroes, with their Tweets and updates inevitably by-passing whatever a press conference or press release puts out.

So one doesn’t have to be a fan of cycling to appreciate the Tour de France – just appreciating great marketing stories should be enough.

Jonathan Dodd is a Research Director at market research company Synovate. Contact him at jonathan.dodd@synovate.com