On April 27, Keep the blockbuster cycling event “Good Ride Festival” ushered in the first offline event of the second season in Shanghai. Cyclists in Shanghai gathered at the World Expo Festival Plaza to enjoy this large-scale event specially designed for cycling. The event site not only featured rich interactive experiences and dynamic cycling sports, but also a 100-person cycling group city parade led by the Tokyo and Rio Olympic women's cycling team champion Zhong Angel to enjoy the beauty of Shanghai by cycling and deliver the joy of cycling.
New gameplay for popular race IPs, good riding festival keeps you curious
According to the “2024 Sports Trend Guide”, 2023 was the year when outdoor sports broke out, and cycling maintained the popularity of the previous year and remained in the top 3 in the Internet Exposure Index. Along with the popularity of cycling, the demand for content among athletes is also growing rapidly: from January to October 2023, the number of notes posted on social platforms related to cycling increased by nearly 400%, the number of notes posted on social platforms exceeded 1.8 million, and the number of “cycling” topics read nearly 1.3 billion. In line with this trend, cycling-related events and events are also becoming more and more popular.
In the fall of 2023, the Keep Good Riding Festival was launched for the first time. Through an autumn cycling carnival, it opened up indoor and outdoor cycling scenes, bringing together family dynamic bike users, outdoor cyclists, and daily commuting users, bringing together more possibilities for cycling. Since the launch of the event, it has attracted more than 6.5 million cyclists. Nearly 1 million core users have ridden continuously for more than 7 days, covering 350 large, medium and small cities across the country. With this kind of enthusiasm, Keep will once again launch the second season of the Good Riding Festival in 2024, setting up rich activities around four themed stages to bring cycling fun for cyclists throughout the year.
The first stop of the Good Ride Festival 2024 event was jointly launched by Keep and Unify Green Tea. Brands such as JD 3C Digital, Yipberry, and Permanent Bike help the vitality. The event lasts for one month. The theme is the Spring Cycling Treasure Hunt Program. Users can redeem “Good Riding Tickets” by completing indoor and outdoor cycling, participating in topic interactions, and completing designated tasks to participate in the daily lottery. Prizes include Keep Bikes, Unified Co-branded Gift Box, Keep B4 bracelet, unified green tea, etc., with a maximum value of 1999 yuan. In addition to this, this Good Cycling Festival also encourages users to discover cycling routes while cycling, setting up four directions: the city's top brand route, the hidden urban route, the natural wilderness route, and the hard core challenge route. In the end, 12 routes including “Beijing Style Night Ride to the Forbidden City”, “Fatong Avenue Hidden Treasure Route”, and “Whiti Willow, Meishan Riverside Ride” were selected to provide reference for cyclists from all over the country.
In addition to rich online activities, the 2024 Good Riding Festival will also include large-scale offline carnivals. Each stage will have an offline cycling carnival as a happy ending, bringing a lively social experience for cyclists. The first offline event in Shanghai in the second season of the Keep Good Riding Festival, with the theme of the “Spring Cycling Treasure Hunt Program”, began with smiling warm-up exercises led by Keep's star coaches, and culminated in cheers at the start of the 100-person cycling group city parade. The 100-person cycling group consists of 4 famous cycling groups in Shanghai: Zhong Angel Cycling Club, PLAYER, MFSH, and WòMen Ride Club. They each cruised 4 popular local cycling routes in Shanghai, bringing the joy of cycling to the streets and alleys of Shanghai in spring, drawing passers-by to stop and cheer for a group photo.
From I to E, Keep breaks the barriers of indoor and outdoor riding
Keep's first smart exercise bike, the C1, was launched in 2019. It advocated helping users move professional exercise bike shops home, and immediately handed over an excellent questionnaire: at Double 11 the following year, the single product won 24% of the market share of the Tmall spinning bike category. Since then, Keep has successively launched the C1 Lite, C1 Pro, and C1 Mini to meet the needs of different users. Throughout 2022, the Keep smart bike group sold 100,000 units alone, making it the first smart exercise bike with sales exceeding 100,000 units in China.
Along with the continuous enrichment of the product matrix, Keep has successively launched activities such as live broadcasts, 17 cycling days, realistic riding series topics, and 88 days of check-in and cashback. Not only did it drive the smart hardware called exercise bike to quickly become the first choice for home sports for ordinary people, but it also inspired the industry, enhancing users' sports experience through in-depth online immersive courses.
With the rise of outdoor sports in 2023, Keep also launched a self-generating version of the smart bike Mini based on user needs and market insight. The wireless plug-free design allows you to ride anywhere without having to worry about the socket location or cable length. Whether watching TV in the living room, enjoying the breeze on the balcony, taking care of the baby in the nursery, or going outdoors for a real and realistic ride, you can easily be satisfied and practice at any time. With the release of the self-generating version of the bike, the rich reality experience brought by realistic riding, and the online+offline rule settings for a good cycling festival, keep breaking out of the living room door and opening up an in-depth layout for outdoor cycling.
In March of this year, Keep held the 8.0 version press conference and announced that it will invest more resources in the outdoor scene. As the first large-scale cycling event after the press conference, the second season of the Good Ride Festival will also integrate various elements such as cycling content, routes, experts, clubs, spinning bikes, realistic riding, and lifestyle to break the limitations of space, bring more fun, interactive and immersive experiences to cyclists, and become a popular cycling event.
Cross-border brand co-branding to add points to a healthy lifestyle
In recent years, people's pursuit of health has become more and more intense. From the strong milk cap in milk tea to returning to the fragrance of the tea itself, a green and healthy lifestyle has become a new trend. As a leading brand promoting a healthy lifestyle, this collaboration between Keep and Unify Green Tea not only promotes an active sports lifestyle and conveys the brand concept of unifying green tea for health, but the theme of Smile Cycling also calls on the public to smile at life during sports, smile at partners during communication and interaction, smile at the city when shuttling down streets and alleys, and smile to the Earth when using cycling instead of private cars. Through the linkage between brands and the interaction between brands and users, the smiles are greater, farther, and happier.
Today, as an effective way to enhance the brand's influence and reach a wider audience, there are endless cases of brand co-branding, and Keep's collaboration with the Unify Green Tea Festival not only makes more people feel the joy of cycling, but also encourages cyclists to slow down through the city, experience the different scenery at four o'clock in their current intense and fast-paced lives, enjoy the beauty of life, relax their body and mind, and get a healthier physical and mental experience. The physical and mental health of the public is the cornerstone of a healthy society, and it is an important part of every company implementing corporate social responsibility.
Li Dongan, a senior researcher at the Keep Sports Research Institute, said, “The rapid growth of cycling can not only enhance people's physical fitness and improve the health level of the population, but also drive the booming development of the cycling economy. From small coffee shops on cycling routes to new leisure and vacation options with the theme of cycling, to the localization of international cycling events, to employment and investment in related industries, the cycling economy has broad prospects for development. In the future, Keep will continue to explore new growth points for cycling, providing users with high-quality products, courses, events, and cooperation, so that cycling -- the sport most familiar to Chinese people -- can show greater appeal.”
According to information, the first stop of the Keep 2024 Good Riding Festival in Shanghai is just the beginning. On May 18, June 22, and August 3, there will also be events such as cycling races and carnivals in the three popular cities of Zhengzhou, Guangzhou, and Wuhan. During the upcoming May Day holiday, the second phase of the Good Riding Festival -- “It Turns Out You Are This Kind of Young Cyclist” will take over the “Spring Cycling Treasure Hunt Program” and log in to the Keep App and launch a fun cycling race in Zhengzhou on May 18, so that the event will bring richer sports experience to cyclists, and let the passion of cycling ignite the charm of Zhengzhou.