GRAVAA: sixty million earned impressions, zero ad spend

The brief

GRAVAA is a Dutch cycling technology company producing an adaptive tyre-pressure system that adjusts pressure in real time based on terrain, speed and rider preference. When I joined as their first communication professional, the product was technically sophisticated and almost entirely unknown outside a narrow circle of cycling technology enthusiasts. There was no paid media budget.

The strategic context

Cycling consumers are sophisticated and sceptical, and coverage requires a genuine story. The answer was not a launch event or a content calendar. It was placing GRAVAA at the moments in professional cycling where tyre pressure most obviously mattered.

The Gravel World Championships

Marianne Vos competed on GRAVAA equipment. We positioned the story with cycling media in the weeks before the race, so journalists already understood the technology when the race happened. Coverage followed in more than thirty outlets, all editorial, none paid.

Paris-Roubaix

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot won the women's race for Visma | Lease a Bike on GRAVAA equipment, with multiple riders on both Visma teams using it on the cobbles. The same advance-positioning approach, reaching a global audience and confirming the system as a performance solution trusted at the highest level.

The results

Sixty million earned impressions across media coverage, creator content and social amplification, with no paid media. Social following tripled across all channels during 2024. More than nine thousand email subscribers built in the same year. More than thirty media outlets, concentrated around the two event moments but sustained through the year.

What the programme demonstrates

Timing is a strategic variable: GRAVAA was positioned and journalists were informed before the moments, not reactively. Performance context is credibility, because validation in high-stakes competition is something consumers cannot replicate. The absence of a media budget is not an obstacle, since sixty million impressions came from editorial judgment rather than paid placement. Email is more valuable than social reach, because it is an owned relationship rather than an algorithm-dependent following. And an engineer-led team needs a communication counterpart: one senior professional with deep cycling media relationships was enough.

The honest assessment

The timing was favourable. Product availability, Vos's participation and growing interest in gravel racing lined up, and not every year or every brand will have equivalent moments. The product was genuinely innovative, and earned media amplifies a real story rather than creating one. And professional athlete involvement requires product readiness, because the reputational risk of a failure in a high-profile context would have been severe.