I'm not talking about me (although, also true). I'm talking about the brands I work with daily. No one better represents this passion for their work than Mark Miller at Precision Bikes. After 25 years as a jewler, Miller took the leap of faith for his love: Bicycles.
Ten years later, he has built something special in Lafayette, Louisiana. He's built a bike shop with a culture and community that's infectious. So infectious, it pulls from a three state region (MS, TX, LA). Anyone can carry bicycle inventory, but you're hard pressed to find a shop with the passion than Mark Miller brings to the bike business.
On my first trip, I caught this bug in Lafayette (as well as some po' boys, biscuits, etoufee, etc.). Fortunately for me, Precision Bike's digital BRAND didn't match the unique experience Mark Miller had created when you walked through the doors of the shop. This is what I love to do–build digital brands–so I jumped at the opportunity.
This project consisted of a new digital brand and a video series.
New Digital Brand
This process started with building an entirely new responsive website. The first and most important piece of the equation is the look and feel. One observation, I made right away is nearly every bike brand is black, white and red. Precision had already embraced this design, so the website also carried this brand continuity. Mark made a strategic decision not to sell online, so we wanted to make sure the page creatively showcased the inventory he had on hand, as well as the importance of stopping by the shop and joining the shop culture, hence, the imagery of the groups rides.
From an SEO perspective Precision Bikes is fortunate to have a content creating machine in the form Ruud Vuijsters (say that 3 times fast, or just say it once, actually). He's blogging on a daily basis and Google loves content creators, so we made sure the blog streamed through to the home page for Google crawlers. The brands carried by the shop are also linked back to the blog. Finally, we established additional touchpoints in the form Google+ and a Youtube channel, to increase organic search traffic.
Video Creation
Once we built the website, we wanted to begin to telling the brand stories through the use of video. I flew to Lafayette (more biscuits, boudin & cracklins, po' boys, etc.) and spent two days chasing Mark Miller with a video camera. For the record, this chase begins at 4:30 am daily. I've included the first of a video series below: PASSION. It's impossible to turn on a camera and not tell Mark's story of passion.
As I made my video edits, I learned an important lesson: LIFE'S MORE FUN WORKING WITH PASSION.