\u0160koda is using its partnership with the Tour de France to promote the women\u2019s race by transforming penis graffiti along the route into artworks. The campaign aims to increase visibility for women\u2019s cycling, which currently attracts significantly fewer viewers than the men\u2019s event.<\/p>\n
As the world\u2019s biggest cycling event returns, the Tour de France faces a familiar challenge: every year, hundreds of penis drawings are graffitied onto the race route.<\/p>\n
But instead of simply painting over them, \u0160koda, Official Main Partner of the Tour de France, with the help of AMV BBDO, is transforming the crude markings into artworks that promote the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, using the visibility of the men\u2019s race to shine a spotlight on the women\u2019s peloton.<\/p>\n
The initiative is particularly fitting for \u0160koda. 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, \u0160koda is using one of the most visible moments in men\u2019s cycling to help grow the audience for women\u2019s cycling.<\/p>\n
While the men\u2019s Tour de France attracts a global television audience of more than 3.5 billion, the women\u2019s race reaches around 23 million viewers. This campaign aims to leverage the Tour de France audiences to help promote women\u2019s cycling and boost those viewing figures.<\/p>\n
Each year, organisers deploy a specialist team known as the \u2018Eraser Men\u2019 to remove offensive graffiti from the route before it is broadcast around the world. Armed with rollers and large quantities of paint, the team works stage by stage to cover the markings before the race passes through.<\/p>\n
This year, on certain stages \u0160KODA will equip the Eraser Men with specially designed stencils created by female artists, allowing them to transform the graffiti into striking artworks that celebrate the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.<\/p>\n
For the 2026 campaign, \u0160koda has partnered with French illustrator Celine Dormeau and London-based illustrator Erin Aniker. Their designs incorporate the original graffiti and transform it into bold visual imagery that promotes the women\u2019s race and encourages fans to follow the action through #WatchTheFemmes, the official race hashtag.<\/p>\n
Meredith Kelly, CMO \u0160koda Auto says: \u201c\u0160koda started as a bicycle brand and 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\u2019s 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\u2019s race and encourage more people to watch it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The campaign will be visible on the race route throughout the Tour de France and broadcast to the event\u2019s global television audience. It will also run across Instagram, TikTok and Facebook from July 24.<\/p>\n
To support the campaign launch, imagery will include a collection of artwork executions showing how the original graffiti has been transformed into finished illustrations. Additional photography from last year\u2019s campaign will also be made available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u0160koda is using its partnership with the Tour de France to promote the women\u2019s race by transforming penis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":802883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[376219,64,63,376220,784,376221,101058,85,2845,376222],"class_list":["post-802882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-amv-bbdo","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celine-dormeau","tag-cycling","tag-erin-aniker","tag-skoda","tag-sports","tag-tour-de-france","tag-tour-de-france-femmes-avec-zwift"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}