What is a press launch these days? Who benefits? Who gets short-changed? Are they immoral? Are they ecologically indefensible? Is he overthinking it all? Benji gives you a peek behind the scenes on a press launch.
Words: Benji. Photography: Benji and as credited.
Press launches eh? For a while there they all but disappeared. In the Covid and the immediate post-Covid era, press launches pretty much did not happen. It was all Zoom calls, PowerPoints and PDFs with the occasional bike arriving in a box. And reader, this was totally fine by me. It was fantastic in fact. I got the info. I got the opportunity to ask questions. I got the bike to test on familiar trails for a decent period. Win-win-win, surely?
I am not a fan of press launches. Which makes my job as Tech Editor for a mountain bike publication somewhat curious. Surely press launches are one of the reasons I do the job? Not really. Even before my life got complicated by childcare and eco-guilt I was never a huge fan of press launches. As a younger, freer and singler journo I always felt… weird at being hosted by a brand. To my perhaps overly cynical and suspicious mind, the whole thing just felt like when a politician accepts various trips and goodies from a business or lobby group.
Is it enough to just think/state that I’m above such bribey vibes? I’m sure all the politicians who go on expenses-paid-by-Big-Oil jollies think they’re doing nothing wrong either. But are bike industry press launches the same sort of borderline bribery? Or is it just brands trying to ensure an amount of coverage and a fair crack of getting their info across? Hey, maybe it’s both?
Seriously titting about
Am I being overly serious about these things? After all, it’s just titting about on bikes isn’t it? Yes and no. I take my titting about very seriously. I take my job very seriously, believe it or not. I very much feel an obligation to give impartial insight as to what new bikes behave like. Mountain bikes cost thousands of pounds. Mountain biking is very probably the single biggest passion in your life (well, maybe outside of family and all that).
Ultimately, the reader is number one. That’s you that is. My theory – nay, knowledge – is that if you do things with the reader being your prime concern, everybody ultimately wins in the long run. Just doing things to please a bike brand is a short-sighted race to the bottom where everybody – bike brands included – loses.
Anyway. With all these hoo-has in mind, I thought I’d take you through the ins and outs of a very press-launchy press launch I attended a few months ago. Namely, the launch of the latest Specialized Stumpjumper.
I am not a normal Earthling
At the end of April this year, I received an email from Specialized UK’s mountain bike brand manager essentially inviting Singletrack to the launch of the new Stumpjumper in May/June time. The launch was going to take place in Vancouver, Canada. The bike would be announced to the world in July. There wouldn’t be very many UK publications receiving this invite.
To most normal Earthlings this invitation would all sound very flattering and exciting and an instant reply of ‘YES’ would be sent. But I am not a normal Earthling. I am essentially an Eeyore with children, who also works for an incredibly overstretched independent publication. My immediate reactions and thoughts are not about riding rad trails in Vancouver. They are about the complications of childcare, the ecological guilt of flying halfway around the world and the problems that are going to be caused by being out of the office for basically an entire week. Ultimately, it was a close call as to whether we’d accept the invitation but in the end, because not a lot of UK publications would be in attendance, combined with the fact that the Specialized Stumpjumper is a significant enough bike, should get us enough eyeballs landing on Singletrack content.
Hey, in a very meta kinda way the very feature you are reading right now was part of the decision to attend the press launch. Sure a ‘First Ride Review’, some GoPro POV footage for the ’Gram and a news story are all well and good but if we can also get some sort of (hopefully interesting) magazine feature out of the trip, so much the better.
I should also come clean and mention that Specialized UK mentioned that there would be some ‘Guest Stars’ attending the launch. Knowing that 2024 is Specialized’s 50th anniversary, this did get me a bit excited. Who was going to be there? Shaun Palmer? Ned Overend? Loïc Bruni? Finn Iles (my current Man Crush)? Despite my journo cynicism, I do have a sad fanboi streak a mile wide for such ‘stars’. I was also very, very intrigued as to what Specialized had done with the Stumpjumper. Would it be a mini-enduro mullet? Would it just be done with it and be an ebike? Maybe it’ll be a bike that can be swapped from electric to regular?
To cut a long story short, I replied to Specialized UK accepting the invitation. Specialized duly sorted out travel and accommodation. The domestic logistics were fairly complex and politically fraught as expected but we got sorted in the end thanks principally to the trip coinciding with school half-term holidays.
Big Transport
I don’t think I’d been on a plane since 2013. Nothing appeared to have changed in the intervening 11 years. Flying is still impressively awful. Some sort of perfect blend of extreme pulsing stress and mind-bending tedium.
It’s the sort of tedium that has you resorting to writing work notes into your phone’s Notes app: “Why are boarding passes such an annoying shape? First flight. Bouncing children. Middle seat. Sleeping aisle seat person. Nearly wet myself. Watched Dune finally (perhaps not quite how the director intended). Watched Elvis (good but didn’t quite capture the Vegas era’s bloat). Watched Inside Man (terrible, despite cast and Spike Lee). General worry that the dinky microphone set-up I accidentally left in my hold luggage would get incinerated. Second flight. Read a few more pages of map history book. Fell asleep.”
Upon arrival at my ultimate destination of Vancouver, we were swept away to a hard-to-tell-how-large-it-is-because-UK-vehicular-scale-has-gone-AWOL Lincoln Navigator (with heated seats and everything. My eco-guilt/bribery-radar both go up a notch.
This first evening of arrival was just a matter of getting to the venue. There was to be no PowerPointing. Nor any hideous icebreaking pasta party or such. Have some dinner, say hello to some new people, say hi to some familiar faces not seen for a while, get the general timetable for the next couple of days. Then get to my room. I do not want to do Day One with a hangover.
Once dinner is dispatched, I retire to my hotel room. Inside the hotel room is a table. On the table is a relatively sizeable amount of, shall we call it ‘swag’? Riding gear and accessories basically. This is not entirely a surprise as I’d been asked to provide my clothing, helmet and shoe size a few weeks prior. I’ll be honest here. From most other bike brands, I’d have probably said ‘Er, thanks but no thanks’. But… Specialized makes some of my favourite apparel. And helmets. And shoes. It fits. It functions. It looks good. So yeah. I accepted the swag. My bribery radar emits a loud ‘ping!’
The head-to-toe branding presents something of a peer group dilemma for tomorrow. Do I wear all of it, like a Good Boy but risk looking like a bit of a dork? Do I wear none of it, and risk putting someone’s nose out of joint and looking hillier-than-thou? Do I just wear some of it? I leave it until the morning to decide. Sleep is very much required now.
Staying cool
Day One. Over breakfast, it was announced that the special ‘Guest Stars’ would be Mike Sinyard (founder of Specialized) and… Rob Roskopp (ex-Santa Cruz co-founder). Now then, most other journos attending were not quite as excited as I was about hearing that Mr Roskopp would be attending. Sure, they were interested in why Roskopp was attending a Specialized launch but I was less interested in that than in MEETING FREAKING ROB ROSKOPP SKATEBOARD LEGEND FROM THE 1980S AND SOMEONE WHO WAS IN THE 1986 ‘WHEELS OF FIRE’ VHS CLASSIC THAT ME AND MY BROTHER WORE OUT.
Ahem.
Anyway, I spent the entire morning staying away from Mr Roskopp. I was genuinely star-struck.
Back to the Stumpjumper. After a short drive to the trailhead, the bike was revealed to the throng of international bike journos. There was not a great deal of fanfare. The general theme was to get bums on seats and out on the trails. Which is a relatively bold move but it’s one that I think nicely calls the bluff of bike journos. Instead of the far more common presentation-first-then-test-ride, just being given the bikes to get on and ride means you have to come up with your own thoughts and insight. You can’t just parrot what you’ve been told. But neither can you be all wilfully contrarian and come out with some statements that counter what you’ve been told in the PowerPoint.
In terms of bike set-up, I accepted the mechanics’ rear suspension set-up and set the rest up myself. Fork, tyre pressures, saddle angle/fore-aft, stem spacer height, etc. I’m old enough to remember the days when I used to take a short stem and a wide handlebar with me on press launches to replace the stock cockpit. There’s no need to do much of that these days, thankfully.
Festival of overthinking
After two or three hours riding around in a group, I had two main thoughts: firstly, the key designers at Specialized can ride bicycles really, really well and secondly, this part of Vancouver feels a hell of a lot like Monmouthshire. Maybe Monmouthshire mixed with the Lake District. I had also had a few ideas about the Stumpjumper but generally was trying not to overthink it.
How to ride during a press launch is a funny one. I’ve left behind the urge to rag it at 100% on these things. No good comes of it. You don’t learn anything more about the bike really. And you sometimes learn more than you want to about foreign health care. Don’t crash. But don’t cruise either. I don’t want to hurt myself by trying too hard but I also want to get a feel of the bike. But also, I don’t really want to fool myself that it’s possible to get any mega valuable insight after a day or two riding unfamiliar trails in unfamiliar ways. I basically try to ride like I’m riding on my own. Which I think is a very hard thing to do at press launches. Press launches are often injury festivals.
After the riding comes the presentation. During presentations, I generally don’t ask my questions. This habit began partly due to shyness, combined with partly not wanting to be like the person in work meetings who keeps them going on longer by asking questions, but these days I keep quiet because I prefer to ask the relevant people directly afterwards in a one-to-one situation so I can keep the garnered information to myself.
The evening of Day One was a relatively calm affair. This is no longer the noughties where quite frequently the presentation (and test riding for that matter) ran a distant second to getting leathered on the host brand’s tab. This is the 2020s. We all need to get back to our rooms to do some work (unrelated to the launch). We all have early starts to shoot unique video shorts of the new bike somewhere nearby-but-doesn’t-look-it. We’re (nearly) all middle-aged giffers who prize beds over beers.
Unlikely meetings
Day Two. Breakfast. Then back to the trailhead to make some adjustments. I’m not shy about asking for changes to test bikes. In this instance I got a tyre swapped and a few of the geometry adjustments tweaked (longer chainstay, higher BB, slacker head angle etc). I also partook in the main thing that Specialized wanted me to do, namely trying different volume spacer configurations in their new semi-proprietary rear shock.
And then it happened. I was sitting down under the gazebos having something delicious and Mexican to eat and He came and sat next to me. Rob Roskopp is now eating a burrito next to me.
I honestly can’t remember what the first thing I said to him was. He must have spoken to me first surely? Maybe he asked who I work for or something. Anyway, I didn’t embarrass myself. Mr Roskopp is a nice guy (TFFT). I asked him a question which I think he was genuinely surprised by and contemplative about (“Do you still consider yourself a skater first and foremost?”). And I also learned that he kind of ended up joining Specialized because he and Mike Sinyard were both putting the bins out on the street where they both live (probably quite nice bins I imagine) and just got talking. The bike industry really is still a pleasingly small world.
The real stars
So what have we learned from all of this waffling about a press launch? I have no idea. Hopefully, you’ve got a bit of behind-the-scenes info as to what goes on (and what doesn’t go on). Hopefully, you have seen – and believe – that you as the reader of Singletrack’s content are the person we still put on a pedestal.
As I was near the end of my return journey home (which involved a missed connecting flight, an overnight stay in Nowheresville Calgary, a toppling dominoes effect on my already delicately balanced domestic logistics once more, a lift back up northwards in Guy Kesteven’s van and a couple of train journeys), I was waiting on a Leeds train station platform in a semi-comatose state waiting for the TransPennine Express back over the border. And a guy came up to me.
“Did you get that from the magazine?” he asked. I was wearing a Singletrack Magazine-branded sweatshirt.
“Er, no. I work for ’em.” I replied.
“Are you Benji?” he asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Ah! I did wonder if it was you. I read your mag. I’ve been a subscriber for ages. Keep up the good work. It’s a great mag.”
“Will do. Cheers. Thanks for subscribing.”
And with that, all of my disquiet and angst dissipated. You lot keep reading. We’ll keep writing.
Benji’s travel and accommodation were kindly paid for by Specialized.
Thanks Ben. That was interesting and appropriately droll.
I especially thought you captured the wearisome process of long distance international travel for work (or other) purposes bang-on.
Your age?
You don’t look a day over 55!
Ha..! You are exactly the same age as me. Waaaoooowwww.. 😀