By the time you read this, the mystery will have been resolved. Up until Thursday this week, we were asking: Is Trek’s new road bike an aero bike? A climbing bike? Is it a Madone? An Émonda? Is it an aero climbing bike, or a climbing aero bike? Is it a Mamonda? An Émonone? Or are they just going to admit it’s not for climbing, it’s not for rouleuring, it’s actually for selling and call it the Trek Marketing Department’s Finest Hour?
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, your ignorance is a rich blessing. If you do know, but have the strength of character not to care, you’re a better person than me.
Once upon a time, and I’m old enough to remember it, a new bike model was launched with either a simple press release that announced the thing’s existence, price and availability or, for a flashier affair, an invitation to a launch. At the launch they’d tell you about the bike, and maybe let you go for a ride on one. The launch usually happened somewhere warm, so people would turn up, and where the roads were very smooth, so that the bike felt nice to ride. Then we just reported on it, told you when you could buy it and how much it would cost.
Happy days. Now, the marketing department want to draw us into a narrative of mystery, investigation, and revelation. An unknown bike appears – perhaps a reporter is quietly guided towards it leaning against a cafe wall at an early season training camp. Maybe it’s on a team car roof at a recce for a Classic. No one knows much about it because other than the photo, the whole thing is embargoed. The team feeds the rumour mill with a few careful Instagram posts. Finally there is an announcement, just like the old press release, but by this point we read it as if Moses had just walked down a mountain and handed it over. Part of the justification for this is the hope that we won’t notice how enormous the price is.
I know all this, but I am still a marketing department’s dream. Show me a headline that says, “Remco Evenepoel seen on New Mystery Aero Bike,” and you’ll discover that Tissot don’t have an instrument sensitive enough to measure how fast I click on it.
I don’t know why I care, but I do. There are bike brands I’m interested in – there is no rational justification behind which ones, other than to admit I’ve been gamed by the marketing. There are others I can barely identify.
For instance, I genuinely wanted to know about this Trek. When Pinarello launched two new, and totally different, time trial bikes in the space of a month in 2013, I was spellbound. Yet I couldn’t name you a single model made by Merida – in fact I just had to check that was how you spell it. It’s not a reflection on the product, just a measure of how well the brand has its fingers in my brain.
It’s not as if I’m going to buy any of these things. I’m not even going to lust after them, at least not very much. The closest I ever get to having actual skin in the game is if someone launches something that might make something that I already own look a bit dated. I don’t want the new model. It’s more that I don’t want the new model to exist. I can’t decide if that’s luddism or envy, but it’s certainly one or the other.
Modern bikes are impressive, and they keep getting better. But if the bike design department were making the same progress as the marketing guys, they’d be able to fly by now.
