Le Bridge
Tour de France local community branding
On July 5th, Le Tour de France makes it’s ‘Grand Départ’ here in Yorkshire. More importantly, on Sunday 6th July, the second stage of the event running from York to Sheffield makes it way through the Calder Valley, in particular Hebden Bridge.
I’d like to estimate how many spectators will be lining the streets or watching it on tv but I can’t – all I know is that it will be a lot. I’ve heard from multiple sources that Le Tour de France is the largest free sporting spectator event in the world. Throw in the fact that the last two winners of the yellow jersey are Brits and its easy to see why local communities are getting excited about the commercial prospect of Le Tour rolling through their village.
Welcome to Hebden Bridge tourist guide
A couple of colleagues and myself here at the Hebden Bridge Town Hall decided to take on the responsibility of creating a TdF ‘brand’ for Hebden Bridge. The initial concept was to create a series of stickers, banners and posters that local businesses could display on their premises with the intention of making customers/visitors not only aware that TdF was coming to Hebden Bridge, but that Hebden is excited about TdF and is going to fully embrace the race when it arrives. We want people in and around Hebden to feel enthusiastic about the TdF and come to back Hebden Bridge to watch the race.
Business Survival Guide
There are very strict rules about who and how you can use the official TdF branding so we felt Hebden deserved its own identity. Already, lots of local organisations and businesses have started putting on events and promotions coinciding with TdF and we wanted a unifying brand for Hebden that could tie all these events together and eradicate any fragmentation.
Selection of downloadable website buttons
Our proposal was to give window stickers, posters, banners, coasters and flags away to local businesses for free (people are more likely to engage with a cause if they don’t have to pay). Unfortunately, after a lot of hard work by my colleagues here at the Town Hall and myself, we were unable to raise sufficient funding to roll everything out in time for the all important bank holiday weekends of April and May – the perfect opportunity to make visitors to Hebden aware of the TdF. Therefore, apart from an appearance in the recently released ‘Welcome to Hebden Bridge’ tourist guide, Le Bridge is a digital only campaign. A website has been set up where local organisations and individuals can download digital collateral for their own use as well as printable PDFs of the poster templates.
lebridge.co.uk website
