Specialized Gravel Campaign
As gravel grew into a broader riding category, I saw an opportunity to rethink how Specialized told the story at retail.
Rather than marketing each bike and piece of equipment as a separate product, I developed a global retail campaign built around the gravel experience. The campaign connected bikes, equipment, technology, education, community, and retail activation into one flexible system that markets could adapt to their own stores and communities.
My Role: Retail Marketing Strategy · Creative Direction · Campaign Development · Global Retail Strategy · Visual Communication
The Opportunity
Specialized was good at launching bikes and equipment with individual product stories. As gravel grew into a broader riding category, I saw an opportunity to connect those stories into a larger story about the gravel experience.
Working with markets, I saw that riders were often navigating a new and sometimes overwhelming category. They had questions about what to ride, what equipment they needed, where to ride, and how to get started.
Gravel products also crossed traditional category boundaries, with bikes, helmets, shoes, apparel, bags, tires, and other equipment often spread throughout the store. Each product launch communicated its own benefits and technology, but there was an opportunity to look at how these products worked together to support the overall gravel experience.
I saw an opportunity to bring these pieces together, creating a more cohesive way for retailers to tell the gravel story and help riders understand where to start.
The Strategy
I shifted the focus from selling individual products to telling the story of the gravel experience first.
I developed a flexible global retail campaign built around four connected ideas:
Inspire people with the possibilities of gravel.
Educate them about bikes, equipment, technology, and getting started.
Activate the category through rides, clinics, events, and community experiences.
Adapt the system across different retail formats and local markets.
To make the strategy practical for markets, I developed a toolkit that outlined the campaign approach, messaging hierarchy, and ways to integrate new products as they launched. It included a range of retail assets and guidance for using them together, along with ideas for events and community activations that could take the campaign beyond the store.
The goal was to create more than a collection of marketing assets. The system gave markets a consistent global foundation while helping them create a more cohesive and meaningful connection between the rider, the product, and the brand.
The Outcome
The campaign gave Specialized markets a more cohesive way to tell the gravel story, connecting individual products to a broader rider experience.
The approach also opened the door to developing experience first campaigns for other categories, shifting the focus from individual product stories toward the larger experiences those products support.
The thinking extended beyond retail as well, inspiring other channels, including web, events, and internal education programs, to approach campaigns in a similar way. By connecting messaging and experiences across touchpoints, the approach helped create a more cohesive rider journey from inspiration and education through product discovery and engagement.
