Škoda turns graffiti into celebration of women’s cycling at Tour de France

Above: At this year’s Tour de France, graffiti on the route has been turned into promotions for the women’s peloton.

Every year, the Tour de France faces the same challenge: hundreds of penis drawings graffitied onto the race route.

Normally, they send out a team of eraser men to paint over the drawings, but as the race kicked off at the start of July, the race’s main partner Škoda had another idea.

With the help of creative agency AMV BDDO, this time, they sent out the eraser men with specifically designed stencils to turn the drawings into artwork celebrating the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.

The stencils were created by female artists, French illustrator Celine Dormeau and London-based illustrator Erin Aniker. Their designs incorporate the original graffiti and transform it into imagery that promotes the women’s race and encourages fans to follow the action through #WatchTheFemmes, the official race hashtag.

Some examples of the designs along the Tour de France race route

A fitting initiative

Škoda’s aim is to use the visibility of the men’s race to shine a spotlight on the women’s peloton. While the men’s Tour de France attracts a global television audience of more than 3.5 billion, the women’s race reaches around 23 million viewers. This campaign aims to leverage the Tour de France audiences to help promote women’s cycling and boost those viewing figures.

The initiative is particularly fitting for Škoda. Founded as a bicycle manufacturer more than 130 years ago, the brand has supported the Tour de France for over two decades and has been a partner of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift since the race was relaunched in 2022. Now, for the second year running, Škoda is using one of the most visible moments in men’s cycling to help grow the audience for women’s cycling.

Škoda Auto CMO Meredith Kelly says Škoda has a long history of supporting the cycling community.

“As a brand that is known for bringing creative solutions to real-life challenges, we chose this playful and bold approach to build awareness to women’s cycling and give it the visibility it deserves. The Eraser Men do their best to remove as many of these marketings as possible, but there are always more to deal with; these stencils allow us to turn something negative into something positive, to help promote the women’s race and encourage more people to watch it.”

The campaign will be visible on the race route throughout the Tour de France and broadcast to the event’s global television audience. It will also run across Instagram, TikTok and Facebook from July 24.