ESSEC Sports Chair’s Post

🌍🚴♂️ hansgrohe x Pro Cycling: A Perfect Match? Definitely for me! I joined Hansgrohe Group three years ago because I love road cycling. For the brand, though, the decision to start cycling sponsorship was a very rational one: - Professional Cycling is International: It's broadcasted globally with more than 300 race days per year. - High-Value Audience: Cycling fans have high net incomes and love investing in top-quality products (just like me! 😄). - Title Sponsorship: Unlike many sports, cycling allows us to be a title sponsor, not just a name on a banner. Our team name may be long, but it's the wins that count, right? 😉 - Passionate and Emotional: I believe the Tour de France is the most challenging sporting event in the world. Disagree? Watch the Netflix documentary "Tour de France: Unchained" (especially episode 2 where we have the yellow jersey – yay!). - VIP Experiences: Hosting VIP clients, employees, and press events around cycling creates strong community bonds. Stay tuned for our once-in-a-lifetime event at the final stage of the TdF in Nice this year! As CHECK24 Vergleichsportal showed during this #EM, #sponsorship can take many successful routes. What do you think about #sponsoring? Any other best practices that come to mind?

In 2003, the Great British cycling team had only won a single gold medal at the Olympics – ever. Today, they’ve topped the medal table for the last four games. How? New performance director Dave Brailsford implemented a strategy he called “The Aggregation of Marginal Gains”. He summarized it like this: “The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.” It's tempting to believe we need a big initiative to achieve the big result when it comes to improving our customer experiences, digital products, organisations or personal lives. But this overlooks the magic of compound returns. If we can improve by just 1% every week, in a year we’d be up 68%. In two years 183%, in three over 378%. A big result, achieved with over a 150 small weekly gains. If you want to get inspired, here’s the track cycling schedule: https://lnkd.in/d5VzgV4A Let’s go Paris 2024! 🇫🇷 🚴🚴🚴🚴 Read more at https://lnkd.in/dJtncS78 – Photo by Andy Jones on CyclingWeekly #customerexperience #customerfeedback #productoptimisation #marginalgains #digitalproductdesign #productmanagement

The global cycling community is gearing up for a truly historic event: the 2025 UCI Road World Championships, which will take place from September 21 to September 28, 2025, in Kigali, Rwanda🇷🇼. This will mark the first time the prestigious championships are held on the African continent, offering a world-class platform for elite cyclists to compete on the challenging roads of the “Land of a Thousand Hills”. With multiple climbs and high altitudes, Kigali’s terrain will push competitors to new limits. Anticipation for the event is already building in Rwanda and among competitors, who will have a chance to ride new heights and take their place in cycling history. For Rwandans, cycling is more than a sport—it is an essential part of everyday life. Across the country, bicycles serve as a primary mode of transport, helping people commute and transport goods across the hilly terrain. Visitors are often struck by the endurance and ingenuity of Rwandans who navigate the country’s roads carrying heavy loads on their bikes. The 2025 UCI Road World Championships are not just significant for Rwanda, but for the entire African continent. This event will showcase Africa’s readiness to host major international sporting events and inspire the growth of cycling across the region. ••• [RDB-Kigali]

The 1% theory: incremental gains for Olympic Golds. 22 years ago, the British cycling team was woefully unsuccessful. In their 76 year history, they had a single gold medal to their name. 6 years later, the Beijing Olympics saw them claim 70% of the available gold medals in track cycling. A feat which they repeated in the successive Olympics. So, what was the key to this transformation? An influx of funding? A new bike design? In fact these improvements were solely a result of the 1% theory, applying the theory of marginal gains to a cycling team. The team broke down every part of the process, teaching athletes about proper hand-washing to avoid contagious illnesses, paining the floor of the mechanics area white to spot dust and impurities which were negating thorough bike maintenance and transporting mattresses to allow the athletes to sleep in the same position each night. Each 1% increased the teams competitive advantage. This process of continuous improvement sparked inspiration within the team, encouraging every member to begin to identify where these marginal gains may be achieved. While you may not be aspiring take home gold medals in the Paris Olympics, this philosophy could be applied to you and your team. By identifying 1% gains you could see a wealth of improvements in the quality of work you are producing, in addition to inspiring unity within the team. What 1% gains do you think you could make in your personal or professional life? https://buff.ly/49tOJ29 #1%club #marginalgain #1% #1%gain #onepercent #gains #continuousimprovement #improvement #growth #leadership #team

🚀 Interesting fact that blew my mind and still inspires me to this day. 🚀 💡 💡 Did you know if you could get 1% better each day for one year(yes only 1%), you'll end up 37 x times better by the time you are done. 🤯 David Brailsford, British Cycling Coach changed the fate of British Cycling by using a strategy 'aggregation of marginal gains' a philosophy of making tiny marginal improvements in everything you do. Using this strategy he catapulted the British Cycling team from mediocrity to a winning 60% gold medals at the 2008 Olympics. 🥇 🥇 🥇 In 2004, Great Britain won two cycling gold medals after a long history of minimal success. Through marginal gains, Brailsford led the team to win 60% of the gold medals at the 2008 Olympics and set numerous records in 2012. This approach also saw Bradley Wiggins become the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France in 2012, followed by multiple wins from his teammate Chris Froome. David laid the foundation of 2 decades of success for British Cycling with his philosophy of tiny improvements for significant results. ⭐ You don't need to make big changes to get remarkable results. Every tiny step you take in the direction you want to go, counts. It's really helped me improve so many areas of my life including parenting, healthy eating and fitness and much more! What would it mean to you to make 1% changes in the way you live, your health, your relationships, your business, your sales? 💡 Imagine the transformation! What do you think?

Why is a development program in women’s cycling so important? Coming straight from junior ranks into the highest level of racing, makes it sometimes hard to keep the motivation for those young talents as just finishing a race is often the goal. Therefore drop-outs are more often than rare and this doesn’t contribute to the growth of women’s cycling. The range of toplevel riders will expand not that much as how it should grow. Racing with those youngsters in 1.2 and 2.2 level races, will let them compete with a realistic goal and not unlearning them how to win or to race for the win…. Don’t skip steps in development, keep those talents motivated, hungry for more and give them time to grow as an athlete but also as a person. For a sustainable growth of women’s cycling we have to build from the base. That is the only way to create a solid house. When you build a house you don’t start with the roof either. When you decide to invest in the roof, make sure the walls and the base can bear it. Development takes time. Don’t rush and take the risk that the walls break and the roof will come down. You can start over again than…. #unlockyourpotential #developmentfirst #womenscycling

Cycling Austria is revamping its strategy with new measures to boost elite and recreational cycling, including appointing a women’s national team coach, a training coordinator, and a sports director 🇦🇹 https://lnkd.in/dAieB2FW

EF Pro Cycling is a professional cycling team. People at Oatly know how to cycle. According to an overpaid marketing consultant, “Those synergies are impossible to ignore!” That’s why our two historic brands are announcing a multi-year partnership, making Oatly the EF Pro Cycling team’s “Official Performance Partner.” We don’t know exactly what that all means — the contract was long and had big words — but it will most certainly involve introducing Oatly’s dairy-free products into the diets of EF’s world class athletes. Synergy.

If you know stuff about pro cycling, please DM. I have questions. Like: what’s a fixie? Why can’t Björn ride it? Do people at Oatly really know how to cycle? And since we are here: how do you become an overpaid marketing consultant?

Good writing makes all the difference. This is good writing.