bikeshare 2 years later...

Just over two years ago we here at Vancity conducted a social experiment: we wanted to know what would happen if we chose to spend some of our marketing dollars a little differently with a view to combining our marketing efforts with community building. Since our activity was taking place in June (which is Bike Month in Vancouver) we thought, what better thing to do than to gift Vancouver with some free bicycles? Bikeshare was born.

We bought 50 cruiser-style bicycles and came up with the idea that people would take one, ride it, and after three weeks, pass it on. We asked that the third participant or whoever had a bike at the nine week point, return it to us. Then we mobilized our networks both online and on the ground to get the word out about the experiment. Online, the project lived here on ChangeEverything.ca where people could locate and ask for a turn with a bike as well as share bikeshare stories, while our community partners like BEST helped us get the word out on the ground.

Oh sure we had questions; would it turn out to be a good use of money? (not only for us in getting our name out there, but for the community we are so passionate about serving) What would happen to the bikes? Would people sell them for drugs (a fear some people in the community voiced) would they be simply stolen, never to be returned to us? Would people find them useful? Would it change some transportation habits? Would it inspire anyone?

So how'd it go? Well, not only did 48 participants each take a bike, ride it for three weeks and pass it along to new participants, but along the way, through stories logged on ChangeEverything, we started to see that the program was reaching and inspiring people who had never really biked before. It was turning people onto biking! And from a plain old business perspective, we got some downright impressive coverage – full colour above-the-fold-front-page-of-the-Vancouver-Sun kind of coverage - a spot we could not have even purchased even if we had a budget way bigger than what we had. 

What about the bikes you ask? Like I said, we requested that whoever had a bike at the end of the nine week experiment, return the bike to us at Vancity Head office so that we could assess the success of the experiment and then donate the bikes to Pedal Power. Honestly though, we didn’t really expect to get all that many bikes back. We sort of looked at it like we were giving them away as a gift to the people of Vancouver.

What happened next surprised and delighted us. In the 10th week of the experiment, I started getting regular calls from Shane our concierge that 'another biked has just been brought back'. Steadily, the bikes started trickling back to us. By the end of the 12th week, we had received 24 of the 50 bikes back! We were thrilled. The bikes went to Pedal who tuned them up and made sure they got into good hands from there.

By being clever and creative we were able to get our needs met in terms of getting our name out while simultaneously giving something with a tangible benefit to our community. You might even call it Regenerative Marketing.

You might imagine my surprise when Shane called me again last Friday afternoon. He wanted to let me know that another bike had just been returned to us. AFTER TWO YEARS!! Sure it is a little worse for wear, has a flat tire and needs some work, but it came back with the lock and keys and everything. To me this bike is a symbol of the respect and care that sharing and generosity inspire, the cooperative spirit of Vancouverites, and most of all that it may take a while, but eventually, you get back what you put out there.